


Padawan(s) Lost

by Choxy



Series: The second padawan [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: (because Tabitha is a teenager in prime puberty and a little shit who definitely can), Anger, Angst, Best Friends, Canon-Typical Violence, Cussing, Emotional Hurt, Episode: s03e21 Padawan Lost, Family Fluff, Gen, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Mild Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26651659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Choxy/pseuds/Choxy
Summary: Sweet turns to sour way too quickly.Tabitha should know that by now, two and a half years into the war. She should know that a stroke of luck can never hold.She shouldn't have been surprised when Anakin reports Ahsoka MIA. She shouldn't have been shocked with the course of events that took place after.Tabitha should have known she would end up in the middle of it all.
Relationships: 212th Attack Battalion (Star Wars) & Original Female Character(s), Ahsoka Tano & Original Female Character(s), Anakin Skywalker & Original Female Character(s), Obi-Wan Kenobi & Original Female Character(s)
Series: The second padawan [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1594390
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	1. Sweet and Sour

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back!!!! Finally, with a request from fantasy92: Tabitha included in the events of season 3 episode 22 "Padawan Lost". What will and what won't happen? I am going to say this right now, I am going to screw over the canon (timeline) so much in this one. I hope you don't mind.  
> Anyway, enjoy :)

This is a bad idea. 

Tabitha is well aware of that fact and yet the smirk on her face is worth a million multi-colored kyber crystals as she draws near her destination with light spring in her step and the smell of burning electricity wafting through the air, following her like a malodorous gas cloud in an otherwise clean environment. 

Nobody can insinuate that her IQ has increased in number since meeting Ahsoka Tano with her godsawful attitude, especially in younger years. Nor has she gotten any smarter in the two and a half years since she met the reckless adult duo Skywalker and Kenobi. Or the most idiotic soldiers to ever exist carrying the names Boil and Waxer. 

Cody might be the only one who protected her intelligence and sanity all this time. 

_'Evidently not.'_ Tabitha shrugs nonchalantly, picturing the disappointed and unhappy expression on the commander's face after catching wind of what had previously transpired and openly admitting her involvement in yet another 'impulsive experiment'?

Okay, the one-hundred percent _essential_ experiment was more _implosive_ than impulsive but let's not go into details here. 

" _I_ am innocent!" Tabitha declares blatantly before she fully thrust the tent's flappy entrance out of the way, glaring at the soot on the back of her left hand. The fifteen-year-old steps into the 'furnished' interior of the minimally larger-than-average tent, vision flying over the fabric sleeping bags on the ground at the far back, then the vacant spot in the center - where Obi-Wan mostly updates the council daily -, and over to the man she had loudly asserted her innocence to without rhyme or reason. 

Casually wiping away the incriminating black staining the white of her hand, Tabby grins cheekily as the ginger-haired human, who had been merrily reading away, drags his pricking eyes away from the gloomy, sterile shine demanding his attention by flickering like an offensive replica of a feeble flame's embers. 

The aforementioned man fixes her with an unimpressed raised eyebrow and lays the datapad on the stopgap table with a soft thump, leaning back in his rather uncomfortable folding chair made out of the most back-breaking plastic available throughout the galaxies worst parts, to focus solely on his padawan. 

The grin on her face widens slightly and Obi-Wan himself has to admit he is infinitely grateful for the distraction from this monotone _chore_. Although, judging by the playful glint sparkling in those algae-pond-like eyes, he is going to have another report on his hands soon. 

"And what, in the name of the Force, could possibly make me believe you were not, Little One?" Obi-Wan hums, pointedly glancing at the spot on her hand Tabitha is failing to wipe away inconspicuously. The girl catches him looking and quickly clasps her hands behind her back, hiding the incriminating evidence and slipping the grin off her face in favor of mockingly biting her bottom lip and casting a thoughtful glance upward. 

A giggle breaks her pseudo-serious expression when in front of her, her master sighs _(sort of fondly),_ his own lips teased by a jerky tug, and rubs his forehead as if trying to brush off an impending headache. 

He answers his own question. "I don't suppose, for once, you, Boil and Waxer had nothing to do with the... _'ruckus'_ I heard earlier?" 

_'Bullseye!'_ Tabby cheers internally but on the outside, she gasps in theatrical horror and puts a hand above her heart for emphasis. "Why would you say that, Master?" She chortles, trying and failing to suppress a smirk when she can read the urge to smash his head against the table in exasperation in his narrowed eyes. 

"Because, somehow, whenever something explodes it's always you three." Obi-Wan accuses, bite expectedly absent from his voice, provoking a familiar warmth to bloom in Tabby's chest. 

Had you told her five years ago, she would have _this_ with someone besides Ahsoka, be the episodic bane to someone else's nerves (as well as the other way around) and this _someone_ was Obi-Wan Kenobi -the Sith-Killer and the Chosen One's Master- well, Tabitha would have written you off as a crackpot ready for the loony bin (to put it mildly). 

Now, two and a half years after the start of her war and her subsequent apprenticeship, the notion doesn't seem so crazy.

Aware that her master is still waiting for an explanation, Tabby decidedly does _not_ give him that and instead opts to put off lectures and consequences for a bit longer. 

"'Explosion' is a bit of an exaggeration, if you ask me. It was more of a-" _(Rambling_ always works.) "No. _No_ , you know what? I refuse to incriminate myself, I plead the Fifth." The padawan states, sealing her lips with an imaginary key and throwing it down beside her as she plops down onto her neatly arranged sleeping bag. The fabric rustles and creases as she searches for a comfortable position, drowning out the sound of a low chuckle from the other person in the 'room'. 

Ultimately, she settles on her back with her legs propped up and one arm cushioning her head. Not exactly comfy due to the arm guard wrapped tightly around her forearm but she would have to hit her head at least a thousand times over before she took it off for anything less than sleep. 

The conversation is long from over and Tabby knows, so she waits, observing the tent's ceiling moving in sync with the gentle breeze that has managed to weave itself through the mountains and into the small confines of their camp. 

At this juncture, camps and outposts feel more like home than the Temple on some days, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's nice, soothing in a bizarre way. A home outside of home with real friends _you can do_ **_nothing_ ** _fun with because you are in enemy territory_. 

The stunt from earlier was already risky enough because, for all its natural beauty, Centares' smooth plains and bleak woods make it hard to hide from prying eyes. Especially if said prying eyes are yet unaware of the Republic's trusty forces on the Separatists' last civilized world before the _"wild and woolly"_ Outer Rim territory. 

Therefore, no one was allowed to leave camp and Tabitha had been literally dying of boredom, wasting away on the ground and ready for nature to reclaim her when Boil and Waxer came into her periphery like the two bickering horsemen of the apocalypse that they are.

After only a few seconds, her musings are abruptly interrupted by Obi-Wan clearing his throat. Merely glancing at him once, Tabby reclines fully into the familiar, soft fabric and lets her eyes slip shut. 

Maybe, once this conversation is over, the padawan can sneak in some sweet sleep. That always helps her boredom. Or whatever else is on her mind. 

"Need I expect a visit from Helix regarding bizarre injuries?" The ginger asks and Tabby can clearly imagine the quirked eyebrows framing hopeful diamond eyes and furthermore, the fingers twitching to massage the bridge of his nose when Tabby's reply consists of a single, noncommittal hum.

"I don't think so, no." She adds as mercy. Half-baked mercy. "Though I'm pretty sure, had Waxer stood any closer, we'd find bits of his nose on Tatooine." Tabitha mumbles, just loud enough to make sure her master hears. Judging by the shocked sputtering and sudden creak of plastic, he did. 

Luckily for her, all lectures are balked by the steady chiming of an incoming holo-call to which Obi-Wan growls quietly, finally giving in to the urge to knead the bridge of his nose. 

"We are going to talk about this, Tabitha." He relents begrudgingly, standing as Tabitha points a finger at him from where she lies. "Only if Boil and Waxer get part of the fun." 

Another sigh is her sole answer and a dull thump the only sound that follows. Then there is a beat of silence as the chiming stops suddenly before being replaced by a fixed, droning crackling correlated with a holographic image. 

Tabitha blinks her eyes open and opts to listen, thinking the council has to have some crucial intel to relay, otherwise, they wouldn't potentially jeopardize their cover by one too many calls a day. 

Surprised when instead of the uninflected voice from one of the councilors or the inevitable dispatch from their backup Venator's admiral -whose name she had neglected to remember after the man was just a 'tad' bit too rude to the men under his command- her master initiates the conversation with a lot less formality the aforesaid possibilities would warrant, Tabby pricks up her ears to listen more intently. "Anakin, please, do tell me at least you haven't managed to blow _someone's_ _nose_ off." Tabitha doesn't have to see it to feel the pointed look thrown her way. 

"Almost!" She cries out in her own defense and simultaneously sits up straight to face the back of Anakin's holographic tunics. Her mood lifts the moment her eyes fall on the familiar set of ample shoulders and all boredom seems to take a nosedive out of the airlock. 

The fifteen-year-old springs to her feet just as the older Jedi Knight speaks his first words which are completely disregarding what they had just revealed to him. 

"...Tabitha is there?" 

Immediately, the hairs on Tabby's neck stand up straight and the nerves beneath her skin tingle uneasily. Something in his voice almost makes her falter. Something acid and sour in tone but hidden in appearance. Regardless, she sheds the feeling without _too_ much thought, chalking it up to her typical unwarranted anxiety at being separated by thousands of light-years. Morphing the muscles in her face into a lopsided grin, the raven steps into the communicator's range next to her master and raises her hand as a casual greeting. "Right here, Knuckles." 

At last able to get a good look at her friend's face, her own falls immediately. 

Perhaps the tone's appearance isn't as hidden as she had hoped. Anakin's lips are pressed thin, vanishing into an invisible line, the outer corners of his brows are dipped but the skin between them is creased slightly, and when her gaze darts down briefly she sees exactly what she didn't want to see. His hands are clenched into fists, unwavering and still, with veins popping out on top of them, and even through the holo's pale blue shade, she can see his knuckles ready to burst through his skin. 

Uncertain, Tabitha glances up at her master, who seems to have noticed Anakin's repressed demeanor already, going by the worry shining in his blue eyes, and thus misses the change in Anakin following her appearance. 

Obi-Wan, on the other hand, detects the shift in his former padawan's eyes, the loosening of something so incredibly tense it physically pains the older man to see that tension instantly relocate in his shoulders and back. The bad feeling swirling in his stomach only intensifies once he catches the hesitation with which Anakin narrowly opens and closes his mouth as if he lacks the words to explain his unscheduled call and grim mood. So he decides to help him along. Force knows, sometimes Anakin still needs a little push from his old master regarding voicing affairs this jarring, and Obi-Wan is more than happy to oblige. 

"Anakin, what's wrong?" His tone is so soft and gentle, Tabitha quickly identifies it as the one he carries to nudge someone into talking. No careless pressing and pushing, no incessant digging, only a small question and a cordial tone to lend a hand. Yet, Tabby has only ever heard it directed at her and never at someone else (with the exception of a few of their men), so this is disconcerting in another way. Disconcerting mainly because she just now comes to the realization that the origin of this tone has to have been during Anakin's apprenticeship and that, despite knowing these two for so long now, she never understood. 

Now, here she is, a clueless participant in whatever kind of conversation this is going to be, swallowing around a forming clump in her throat as she watches Anakin's gaze grow withdrawn with an undercurrent of a turmoil coiling beneath. 

_"Ahsoka is missing."_

Tabitha freezes. Completely. 

Her breath gets stuck in her lungs, her blood runs cold, and her heart misses ten beats before it scrambles to do its task. 

Every fiber of her being simply _stops_ after hearing those three clear but empty words Anakin spat out as if they were poison in his mouth. Poison that is slowly meandering from her brain through her stone-cold veins down to her heart where it viciously eats away at its vital strings like they are candy. 

It's only then, feeling a bitingly hollow but heavy sensation metaphorically punching her heart like a hated drum, that she comprehends the impossibility that just pierced her ears.

 _'Ahsoka is missing.'_ The sentence rings through her head, bounces off the walls of her skull like a slobbery, old rubber ball and bashes against her brain with such high velocity and volume, again and again until it hurts. 

"What?" Tabby gasps, short of breath and feeling a wee bit faint. 

Her best friend from way before real childhood, gone without a trace, vanished into the same thin air to Anakin's left that seems to physically taunt her as her shocked eyes dart down to the vacant spot. missing the usual confident smile and happy greeting. 

In swift consecutive order, her side is bathed in a friendly warmth as Obi-Wan inches a bit toward her in silent comfort and the man repeats her question with a lot more stability despite his own underlying alarm. Anakin counts off the events of what happened, voice strained and forcibly factual, but Tabitha doesn't truly listen. Doesn't need to, to _know_. She doesn't need to listen, doesn't need to look at Anakin or Obi-Wan, doesn't need to feel anything to _know_ that they have nothing although looked.

After the battle, perhaps hours after Ahsoka first went missing. 

No clues, no way of tracing her current whereabouts, nothing, and furthermore no… 

" _Wait,_ you're not even going to _look_?!" 

It's like blowing a fuse. At one moment, it's like a brewing storm, silent but lingering, the next it's an explosion. With no word of warning, fiery and harsh, her debilitating shock throws out simmering sparks that ignite the coldness traveling with her blood, like a match to fuel. 

Abruptly, the icy rivers in her veins start to boil like the lava falls of Mustafar. Her heart pounds not out of fear but of anger, and every ounce of sleaziness in her muscles is rebuilt with a solid foundation. A foundation of emotion that - like a skyscraper looming above crowded streets - crawls all the way up to her face and darkens her eyes right as they flash to Anakin's deeply troubled ones. 

Her outraged screech is met with a sad and guilty avoidance of eye contact that confirms what she thought and adds fire to the flame. That Anakin still deems it necessary to answer doesn't cool it, _her_ , down. "We can't without abandoning Felucia and leaving it for Separatists." Anakin's voice sounds thin and frail, hesitant like he doesn't believe what he's saying himself. "We have to trust her to find her way back." A scoff bursts through her lips and suddenly there is no place for anything besides anger (and _hurt_ and _betrayal_ ). Tabitha glares at Anakin, disbelieving. _'Would you trust a dying man with a crucial mission?'_ She wants to say but doesn't, instead opting to be more direct. "You know, she could be grievously injured and you wanna do what? _Wait_? _Hope_ ?!" Her voice is rising with each sentence, each passing moment in which Anakin shows no signs of the action that is so typical for the Knight. (The volume hardly conceals the crack as her own thought that Ahsoka could very well be injured startles her.) With empty thoughts and packed sensations clashing, Tabby disregards the flash of _something_ ghosting over Anakin's expression and takes a threatening step closer to the holo-image of the man she never thought she'd be disappointed in for giving up. Nevertheless, angry at for the very same reason. 

"Do you think I don't know that, Tabitha?" The blonde/brunette man grounds out through gritted teeth (that should have been her clue to stop). "But Master Koon is right…" His rigid voice trails off in her head as she registers who had been the founder of Anakin's inaction. And doesn't that just add salt to the wound? The man Ahsoka looks up to like a father. The first to leave her to her own devices without any knowledge of her current situation. 

How effed up is that? How can someone so close to Ahsoka, so readily turn their back while she might be expecting the exact opposite? How is it possible that between a hundred different men, not one has the guts to do something?

That thought ultimately tips the scale and pushes her slanted emotional state off the knife's edge she had been barely managing to balance it on. Anger turns into fury, disbelief into disgust, and hurt into straight-up betrayal. 

Obi-Wan is startled for a second, so unused to the intense ripples coming off of his padawan in sporadic bursts that shadow unbridled, bitter rage, nevermind Tabby who, deep down, feels like she lost herself in a sea of red.

Too distanced from her usual self, Tabby finds herself exploding.

The gentle hand on her shoulder that tries to hold her back is brushed off heedlessly, the soft warning as Obi-Wan calls her name ignored, and the small parts of her that are not inundated in a chippy, desperation-induced fury disregarded without once listening to what they say. 

"So you all just turn your backs on her?!" The fifteen-year-old all but screams now that her temper is in smithereens. "I can't believe you!" An accusing finger comes up to point at him. "You're supposed to be her master. You're supposed to _care_ !" _'You're supposed to not let her go missing in the first place.'_ The assignment of guilt is left unsaid but hangs heavy in the air. 

It feels like two different people are living inside of her at this very moment. The kindhearted, empathetic altruist who reels and shakes in terror of the harsh words plowing from her lips, and the hysterical hateful and hurtful twat who relished the moment her words provoked more than just _(misplaced)_ guilt. 

Twin midnight-blue skies set ablaze by _fuming_ flames and the sound of bones and teeth grinding together, and Tabby knows her words cut a little _(too)_ deep. 

" _Don't. You. Dare."_ The words are stretched thin, ragged by the attempt to rein them in before any damage could be done. 

(Tabitha doubts anything could put a stop to that.)

"Don't you dare assume I don't care about Ahsoka, _Tabitha_! After everything, there's nothing that I wouldn't do to _get her back_ -" An indignant huff spurts from her nostrils. "Oh, really?" Anakin's scowl merely deepens, yet he goes on. " _-but_ I can't take all my forces and send them on a wild goose chase while Felucia is still in the Separatists' filthy hands." The man takes a deep breath that does nothing to lessen the thickness of his tone. "I want to but I _can't_ , alright? All I can do is trust Ahsoka. What else would you have me do?!" 

The angel in her wails, pushes moisture to the forefront of her eyes, trying in vain to grab her tunneled and short-tempered attention. (This is wrong. All of this is wrong. Tabitha hates shouting and yelling and screaming, especially in anger, so why can't she _stop_? Why can't she understand?)

Meanwhile, the prosperous devil on her shoulder overpowers the weeping angel with furious indifference to his hurt and quenches the tears that blur her vision. (She shouldn't feel bad for saying the truth. She shouldn't feel bad about confronting problems. She shouldn't feel _remorseful_ and she won't.)

"Everything other than nothing would be a great start! At this rate, Felucia will forever be fought over anyway. What makes you think _you_ can make a difference, yo-" 

(Finally) Obi-Wan steps in between them to stop the shouting match this conversation has promptly dissolved into before he could manage to prevent it. 

Ironic that the Negotiator cannot settle a dispute between his apprentices, isn't it? However, he is unashamed to admit that Tabby's abnormal reactions threw him off. Of course, the girl has been irritated before, angry even, but she always felt bad, especially if she yelled at her counterpart. Not a second passes before shame overtakes anger and she urges herself to calm down, apologizing sincerely. However, something is different today and Obi-Wan would bet his seat on the council that something is Ahsoka's disappearance. No guilt at her harsh words or hurt because of Anakin's. All she emanates is a raging tornado of unadulterated and unforgiving hostility that is so unlike her, her master had genuinely believed she was incapable of such for the past two and a half years.

Carefully, Obi-Wan lays a steadying, yet restricting hand on his padawan's shoulder, as if she would be able to do more than glare daggers at the man who was thousands of light-years away. Gingerly, he notes the subtle tremors running through her form and the moist sheen to her green eyes that she's struggling to smother behind steely walls. Without a doubt, Anakin isn't looking much better and one glance at the bruises around his eyes, Obi-Wan could see even through the holo's quality, and the louring grimace distorting his features, confirm that. 

"How about we all calm down before we say something we might regret later on?" The Jedi Master interrupts what would have been a vicious insult from Tabitha who snaps her jaw shut with an audible click yet maintains the evil eye at the pointed look directed at the both of them. Anakin, too, backs down visibly when his former master shoots him an additional look, telling him to get a hold of himself and stop letting Tabby's irate behavior press his buttons. This is fearful desperation mixed with worry and amplified by teenage hormones. A reaction is what she's aiming for. 

The younger man, himself, had episodes like this more often than not and Obi-Wan quickly learned staying calm during these arguments doubled the anger but also the remorse in the aftermath.

Several moments of silence pass in which Tabitha does not, in fact, calm down. Not that she put any effort into it anyway. Like crazy, her heart pumps blood through her head to the point where even the silence is deafeningly loud and the insignificant breeze wriggling into their tent is little more than a pinprick of cold against her heated skin. It's all she focuses on but nevertheless, she does not calm and the truth is she doesn't want to. She's ready to throw rocks because looking up now brings her face to face with two matching pairs of eyes telling her to give in. To surrender to the truth that whatever she does will not change what will happen. That she's too far from it all to alter the set course of events. That no one will listen anyway. 

Bitter vomit threatens to crawl up her throat when the galaxy jeers that there is no possible way she can help her best friend wherever she is and however she is. Not without the war tainting her hands in more red than they're already covered in. 

The rage doesn't diminish or soften, rather curls around the knife in her throat and shoves it deeper, leaving her breathless with prickling eyes and knotted insides. Sharply, Tabitha rips herself away from the hand tightened around her shoulder and takes a decisive step back, holding eye contact with Anakin for a prolonged moment. "You're the worst." Before switching her glowering stare to her own master. "Both of you." 

All volume vaporized within the minute, the words are but a broken, disgusted hiss that glides through the gaps between her teeth and is avoided even by the smallest gust of wind that would carry it away. 

Then the teenager runs. 

She pivots on the spot, not a second after the words left her lips, and dashes out of the tent before they could see the stray crystalline tear escaping the corner of her left eye. Before _she_ could see their reactions which promise to hold… what exactly? Pity? Hurt? Anger? Disappointment? All of the above? 

_All of what Ahsoka might be feeling?_

The fresh air, free of any electric charge, hits her flushed skin and transforms the tear track into a stinging patch of frozen ice but she doesn't stumble or sputter. The minor pain helps her force her thoughts away and marginally, Tabby shuts them out, along with the bond resting there. 

She continues running, faster than her legs normally allow.

She runs, and runs, _and runs…._


	2. You can't run from Fate

For what felt like eternities, Tabitha had run. Without knowing where, without knowing how, and barely remembering why when her legs finally buckled beneath her and she was left panting, wheezing for air. Her eyes had stayed screwed shut and even when they opened after minutes she couldn't see past the blurry golden outlines of the sun kissing the peaks of the far mountain range and the luscious green of the endless plains beneath, indicating she had long since left camp and ran all the way to the other side of a mountain onto a little cliff. 

Then her throbbing head had been left for her thoughts to reclaim. Thoughts about the argument ( _she was right and she wouldn't regret anything she said…. So why did mulling over every phrase sting worse than her lungs did?)_ Thoughts about the war ( _it's unfair and cruel but she knew that, didn't she?)_. Thoughts about the changes because of this lasting conflict ( _would the Jedi have dismissed the disappearance of their kin so readily ten years ago? Would Tabby have reacted the same had the war not made an impact on her?)_. Thoughts about the people she couldn't save, the friends she lost ( _Longshot left a geek-sized hole in the battalion after the Citadel, Click a blooming bitterness in her heart, and the hundreds of other men revealed a futility behind every fight no one wants to acknowledge)._

Ahsoka couldn't be another penalty of war, Tabitha couldn't _-wouldn't-_ allow it. And yet, Tabby realized just how useless she was to her best friend from Centares. She finally acknowledged just how helpless she was.

A guttural scream had ripped through her burning lungs and constricted throat, muffled only by her own hands as red-hot tears plummeted to the rocky ground. 

  
  


Right now, walking ahead of the company that has been decimated to half its size in the past two hours or so, Tabitha can feel that same scream build up in her chest, frustration and guilt begging to be released audibly. 

But not here, not in front of everyone, not after all she's done wrong today already. 

It was easy. Get into the outpost, get rid of the trash cans defending it, and take it for the Republic, effectively declaring the onset of the war on Centares. 

One out of three worked out and it's not the first two. 

Perhaps that is the fault of their intel being shitty or the Separatists suddenly being overprepared rather than Tabitha's, but there was so much she could have done better that could have saved at least a dozen lives.

Had she put one and one together immediately, she might have noticed that there were more guards than there should have been. Had she not been hyper-focused on getting the battle on as a last-ditch effort to avoid thinking, she might have given more thought to the bad feeling brewing in her gut. Had she not been so adamant as to forgo talking to others out of petulance, they would have been able to blow the assault off and regroup. 

Had she slept the night before rather than sifting through report after report of missing people in the vicinity of Ahsoka's disappearance, her head might have been in the game when it came down to doing her job. Had she not been so ridiculously worried about the fact that the suspects of these missing reports were Trandoshan hunters no one managed to locate, she could have reduced the casualties and therefore the trauma that stemmed from it. 

So, yeah, the least she can do now is keep it together and not make a fuss about something that was clearly of her own making. 

However, her rushing thoughts seem to want to make it extra hard as they revolve around either the shitshow that was yesterday or the screw-up today. Not that the dozen sagging and sluggish footsteps or the depressing silence help anyhow. 

They would have been victorious by now, mourning some brothers but not so many. Not close to a hundred. Instead, here they are trudging through the shallow foliage of a sorry excuse of a forest, trying to avoid open fields and lose their opponents until they could reunite with the rest of the battalion and her master at the emergency rendezvous. 

Another thing she had quite literally pushed to the back of her mind and shut away since yesterday: Obi-Wan. 

He and Tabitha had spoken the barest minimum since she had returned, seemingly hours after she stormed off, to a camp riddled with worry for their agitated commander. A curt explanation for everyone and a louring glance at her master later and Tabby stomped off somewhere else. 

That must have been everyone's first and final indicator that something was wrong. Tabitha, angry and equally impassive, and Obi-Wan, dejected and uncharacteristically tight-lipped, was something that never should have fit into one sentence together, yet here they were. 

Thus, Tabby doesn't doubt that at least Cody knows exactly what's happened to cause all of this, whether it was from Obi-Wan or Rex, and the others most definitely suspect something. 

Which might have been another point that led to their pathetic defeat today. Too many people worried _about_ her when they should have been worried _because of_ her.

Groaning clandestinely, Tabitha raises her arms to rub her hands across her face in raw exhaustion and irritation at her unruly headspace. The monotonous thump-thump-thump of footsteps behind her only add to her annoyance for their uselessness in her search for distraction. 

However, she can't even be angry at anyone for that. Marching is what a soldier normally does, and soldiers born to fight? Well, no use trying to make them saunter instead of marching in sync.

A sudden pulsating spasm running down her right arm finally presents her with the distraction she was looking for as she lets it fall back to her side and focuses on the replica of her pulse that pumps new blood through the graze she suffered thanks to a particularly trigger-happy droid. 

With nauseous fascination, the padawan watches the wound sluggishly begin oozing again, dyeing the bandage casually plastered over the crusted grey cloth of her upper arm a brighter tone of red. 

Steadily, the boisterous noise of her thoughts turns into buzzing white noise when her brain leeches on the sharp pain in her arm and the ache in the rest of her body. Every painful throb brings her closer to absolute silence until even the men behind her are but a bee's buzzing.

For a few minutes, Tabby ambles ahead in relative peace, head empty and body achy, staring blankly forward at the different shades of green and brown overlaying the blue of the cloudless sky. 

It's only when a sudden presence jogs up to her left that the lulling bubble is popped and sound explodes in her ears, making the dulling pain in her arm vanish from her mind completely. 

Without even peeking to her left, the familiarity and ease with which this presence comes up from her rear tell Tabitha that it's her fellow commander. 

And sure enough, not a second passes before Cody's voice pipes through his helmet's filter, slightly distorted but still his. 

"How's the arm?" The question is formulated casual yet the tinge of concern, which resurfaces with every paper scratch she gets, is tangible. Humoring the man, the padawan peers at the limb in question, gaze lingering on the patch of red standing out from the slightly dirty bandage. Noting its lack of growth, Tabitha turns back to her friend.

"It should stop bleeding any minute now." She dismisses, keeping her previous annoyance from seeping into her voice. In response to her assessment, Cody's bucket tilts sideways almost inconspicuously and Tabby can feel the expectant quirked eyebrow underneath. Rolling her eyes, the young teenie huffs out an exasperated breath. 

"If it doesn't, I'll go to Stitch. Promise." She acquiesces which seems to be enough for Cody, judging by the pleased nod he gives her. Tabitha narrows her eyes at the clone commander. 

"I'm not Obi-Wan, you know?" 

"Is there a difference?" He deadpans in retaliation, earning himself a half-hearted push from the knee-high to his right. 

"Jerkhole." 

"Language."

"Okay, have you come here simply to nag me, _O-Great Mother-hen_ , or is there a point to all of this?" The girl complains frivolously, the ghost of a smile flitting across her lips as Cody snorts in amusement. 

Amusement that dies away gradually and drags Tabitha's achieved peaceful state of mind with it when the real purpose behind Cody's visit dawns on her. 

" _Pleeease_ don't tell me we need to take another detour? I just wanna get to the rendezvous without any more problems." Tabby whines miserably, looking up at her friend with a pleading expression and hoping that she won't bash into a tree or trip over a rock (With her luck, she would probably suffer a broken nose and/or concussion). Cody inclines his head with a worn sigh, one hand coming up to tug at the rim of his helmet as if he actually wanted to rub his chin. 

"Not a detour then. An evasive maneuver?" 

It's supposed to be a joke but it lacks the genuine mirth to come off as one and misses its goal to alleviate the wound-up tension therefore by a hundred clicks. In response, Tabby lets her head sag, chin to chest, cursing their joined luck quietly under her breath. 

_'Stop being miserable, start being helpful.'_

Gritting her teeth against the renewed wave of frustration, the padawan presses a sharp breath through pursed lips and rolls her shoulders, standing as tall as possible. 

It's time to be the highest-ranking officer on-site again, not a sulking teenager.

"What exactly are we going to have to 'evade'?" Tabitha questions, emphasizing the last word with lazy air quotes and watching as her query is met with Cody digging out his holoprojector silently, activating it with a quick flick of the button. 

Flickering to life, the hologram shapes the forest and plains around them, every individual tree placed exactly where it should be, every mountain and hill outlined in great detail. 

Identical to every other time of the one-hundred times she's gone over that map in preparation. Yet, there's something different about it and it takes her embarrassingly long to figure out what it is. Just long enough for Cody to point it out anyway. 

"Surveillance did another scan of our route to rule out the possibility of an ambush." He informs her, one finger trailing along the red line simulating their calculated way through Centares' wilderness. Instead of reaching their destination, however, the gloved digit comes to an abrupt halt at the entrance of a valley they were to pass through, connecting it to a wide-open field on the right and another forest on the left beyond the cluster of mountains circling said valley. 

Where the passageway was empty before, now there are the blaring red images of numerous small buildings arranged just so that they'd have to pass right through them according to their navigation aid. 

"However, their scanners picked up a small settlement located in the passage nearest to our rendezvous and they have reason to believe a Separatist transporter is deploying infantry troops there now." Simultaneously to Cody's indication, the holographic silhouette of a dropship appears hovering in the sky above. 

"Obviously, we're not following through on that plan then." Tabby states the obvious, earning herself a curt bob of the head from the other commander as her thoughtful gaze travels over the 3D map, taking in the rest of the valley in an effort to find a way out of their current predicament which will lead the rest of their beaten company to impending doom. 

"What are our options?" 

Cody moves before she even fully finishes her inquiry, effectively disrupting her view of the occupied settlement by zooming into a different spot with a short flick of his fingers. 

Another canyon separating cliffs relatively close to their initial path that could serve as another possible passage to reach their goal, although the detour will cost them an additional precious hour the rest of their troops might not be able to dwell in one place for. 

The picture swerves to the beginning of the mountain ring they are just about to enter, showing a path alongside the cliffside right next to the open field. No cover whatsoever, yet they would have some time to spare upon arriving at the rendezvous point. 

Now, it's up to Tabitha to decide whether they take the first or second option. Slow and steady and therefore safe, or fast and reckless. 

Both have their pros and cons but the decision is easy, nevertheless. Not that there were any considerable counterarguments against the first option laying on the scale. Risking their safety for their comfort by taking the uncovered route would have serious consequences for all of them because at some point they will have to pass either directly over the vast field or past the valley's entrance. Sensors and scanners would be completely unnecessary to spot them. Like sore thumbs, they'd stick out from the fresh blades of grass and colorful plumes of flowers. 

She'd rather have them pass as close to the village as possible to head for the other entrance/exit without being detected. Even though it'll cost them some time, the foliage will hopefully provide them with enough cover to conceal themselves from their enemy's infantry and surveillance. 

"We'll take the long way around." Tabitha decides, her left index finger now coming up as they continue to march to swipe at the holo, refocusing it onto the aforesaid way. "Once the settlement comes into sight, we'll graze by it undetected using the valley's vegetation, hopefully saving us some time until we exit it." She says, finger trailing along the path she foresees for them to take. 

Hardly half a click of distance will separate them from curious and/or hostile eyes at best, but Tabitha prays that for once Centares will bless them with lush greenery to shield those eyes away. 

"From then on we'll stay low to avoid detection until we rendezvous with the others." Tabitha wraps up her plan swiftly, looking up at the taller commander for some sort of approval she didn't actually need. 

Still, her counterpart satiates her wish for some sign of acceptance with an appreciative nod and a regulatory "Roger that, Commander." before thumbing off the device in his hand and tucking it back into his belt pouch. 

Thereafter, Cody updates the rest of the men over their helmet coms, receiving understanding replies from his tuckered out brothers before the thicket falls back into its natural state of cawing and squealing animals, rustling leaves, snapping twigs, _and marching armors._

They enter the valley, rearrange their course, _keep walking, keep listening, keep watching_. 

It's a rhythm that ingrains itself deep into every fiber of her being after merely twenty minutes of it. 

_Walk, listen, watch._

_Walk, listen, watch._

Routine is truly a wonderful thing for a troubled mind that has been so desperately trying to stay on a linear path instead of spiraling into unprecedented chaos. Like a lifeline, routine guides her to a safer headspace not wrecked by a wicked typhoon. 

A vacant headspace where nothing but numbness could spread. Where nothing else _should_ spread.

Tabitha is woefully proven wrong when, after a total of thirty minutes of trek, Cody is yet again the sledgehammer that tears her cemented state of mind apart, plunging her into the dark recesses of her thoughts while the man himself is totally oblivious to the havoc he causes. 

"Tabitha, about yesterday-"

" _Don't._ " The girl hisses sharply. She can practically hear the click of Cody's jaw snapping shut and see the frown boring into her from underneath the helmet. Taking a deep breath, Tabby releases whatever it is that threatens to bubble out of her and presses on. 

"Just _don't_. I just need…" 

_'...Ahsoka to come back? For her to be fine in general? I need someone to do something? I need someone to care again? I need to not feel useless?_ **_I_ ** _need to do something or I'll never forgive myself?'_

"...time." 

Uneasy silence is her answer as Cody rings for something - _anything_ \- to say or ask which would help clarify the sudden change in behavior that is continuously reigning between their _jetii_.

However, one look at the padawan's eyes silences him. 

The reflecting orbs usually so vibrant, now appear shrouded and smothered, their joyous light gorged out of them. 

Therefore, Cody screws his mouth shut, albeit begrudgingly, and determines it the best approach to allow Tabitha the time she requested. 

But the universe can bet its finest, he will find out what caused their commander _(their sister)_ to descend into listlessness and anger, even if he'll have to pester Obi-Wan for a week until he tells him. 

  
  


The rest of their 'hike' remains coated in this unsettled hush and Tabitha endeavors to fall back into the rhythm from before, failing more than once when she finds the void now filled with repetitive thoughts and feelings and immediately reels back as if burned, scrambling away in a pure panic because she fears being overwhelmed. 

For another ten minutes, it's rinse-and-repeat of this procedure.

_Walk, listen, watch, find the rhythm, and lose it again. Repeat._

That is until a cacophony of other sounds trifles through the leaves and plants and the elongated, rectangular outline of a dark ship peeks over the shallow treetops, high above the house-like shapes just beyond the treeline. 

Suddenly rooted to the spot by some imaginary force, Tabitha can only stare at the floating ship as wails of terror penetrate the rumbling air and viciously stab through her eardrums like a hundred-million pins and needles.

  
  


"That isn't a Separatist dropship."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jetii = Jedi (Mando'a)
> 
> Hey guys, I hope you liked this chapter!  
> Took me way too long to make but I believe the next ones will take even longer. I'm in the middle of an exam phase right now but I'll do what I can!


	3. Emotional Morals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is rather short but I had to make it a sole chapter because it wouldn't fit right otherwise.
> 
> Enjoy :)

_Tabitha could hear them clearly now like she was right in the midst of it all._

_At the epicenter of terror._

_The fearful screams, desperate calls, and heart-wrenching sobs all blur along with her vision. Nauseating swirls and twirls across her vision, so regrettably normal that it barely makes her bat an eye anymore when the world is sucked into a tremendous gravity well._

_To be replaced by another._

_Vibrant green and healthy brown morph into the creamy yellowing hue of cracked walls with discolored flat roofs, making up the common rotund or rectangular dingy houses. The chiseled stone foundations framing the single-story buildings' outlines and their door frames are covered in grimy moss._

_And in some spots even littered with smoking scorched craters._

_That's the second thing her hazy brain registers once her vision is eventually clear of the dancing whirlwind, the initial being the clash of metal that predominates the symphony of panic that crawls up her back, lifting the hairs on the nape of her neck._

_Movements strong but slow and dull as she pivots on the spot, Tabby swallows past the uncomfortable lump in her throat that festered when she took note of the underlying numbness in her bones, provoked by the multitude of sensations beating down on her._

**_"Separate past from present, vision from reality."_ ** _Master Vos' voice resonates through her head, reminding her of one of their first lessons together._ **_"Focus on the differences, let them ground you before paying attention to the vision."_ **

_The numbness becomes a grudging anchor, her distinction between now and then as her wobbly gaze lands on a handful of metal cages lining the massive mountain wall, darkened by the looming shadow of the very same ship the afflicted padawan saw the canopy of._

_Tabitha pays attention then, doesn't move towards the assortment of multicolored limbs jutting out of the sturdy bars, desperately flailing, praying, and pleading with their captors whose towering forms shake with sinister laughs and victorious utterances._

_Focusing solely on breathing evenly and the feeling of her movements, Tabitha shuts out the villagers' past selves crying out for mercy and the assailants' smug expressions and coerces her legs to carry her closer._

_In hindsight, had she paid closer attention to everything transpiring around her perhaps it wouldn't have come as such a shock to her._

_The fuscous and green scales of reptilian heads, the ample physique, the claws, the lisp, the literal mention of_ **_the thrill that comes with hunting these people later._**

_Her irises shouldn't have expanded as far as they did when the revelation hit her, wrapping around her ankles like a twisting vine and rooting her to the spot._

  
  


Suddenly, Tabitha is left blinking as a burst of different colors explodes before her, an abrupt silence cuts off the terrific clamor, and a heavyweight settles in her previously hollow bones. Latter threatens to drag her down to the floor if not for the steadying hands cupping her elbows and the firm shape bolstering her left shoulder. 

For another minute, the crux of her vision withers beneath the swimming of brain fluids and the painful palpitation of veins and arteries before her body remembers how to handle the spur-of-the-moment force reaction. 

The migraine-like ache diminishes and her legs work to carry the seemingly doubled weight of her body until she can feel the muscles in her calves grow rigid and the pressure of the ground against the soles of her black leather boots. 

_"Trandoshans."_

The fifteen-year-old didn't mean for that slip out like a hiss but it did and due to their close proximity, Cody heard. 

"What?"

The clone commander half-expects nothing to sprout from his inquiry, so once Tabitha manages to hold her own again and all she gives him is a curt nod, he tentatively releases her elbows and steps back, still perplexed by the girl's contextless hiss. 

This leads Tabby to also realize that the entire company has come to halt behind them, some staring at them, others at the posing threat that is that transport. 

And none asking questions. 

Retrocognition has become another constant throughout the years. _Since Rhudaur_. By now it's nothing more than going through the motions whenever it pops up. No one, except for shinies, questions this anymore.

However, this time she breaks the cycle by forgoing the usual explanation. 

"Com Obi-Wan. _Now._ " 

  
  


From then on, time switches to fast forward, and just like a video, she watches the characters (including herself) jerk around madly, slinking deeper into the bushes, antsy and anxious hardly a click away from a new potential _(real, very real)_ threat with the clankers breathing down their necks. 

Tabitha didn't forget that. Nobody forgot that. 

Yet nobody challenged her command either as they impatiently waited for the 212th's general to answer his com.

Or when she didn't give them anything, despite the questions clear in their concise glances.

Nor when the portable size image of Obi-Wan denies her request to move in and clear out the Trandoshans and she starts spewing some righteous, honorable, _good_ banthashit to cover up her selfish truth. 

She can't even listen to herself blabbering on about how the Jedi must protect people like these as it is their duty as peacekeepers and defenders of the galaxy. Gets sick when she can't be bothered to even try to be genuine in her care for these villagers. 

It's not like she doesn't care at all. It's just that seeing those poor villagers stuffed in cages, petrified and hopeless, wasn't the jumping point for her. To be truthful, without the Trandoshans there presenting humanoid manifestations of intel, Tabitha would have marched on, however reluctantly and guilt-ridden. She would have put the safety of her surviving troops above the rescue of the forty-man village, willfully sacrificing a few excruciating hours of sleep to mull over her numerous questionable life choices. 

But Life thought otherwise and granted her _one_ opportunity to accomplish something. 

For Ahsoka. 

For her best friend who could be Force knows where and in what condition. 

And she would take it. _Will_ do whatever it takes to wrangle this opportunity into her hands. 

Even if it meant being disgusted by herself and her volatile morals as she guilt-trips her master and every skeptic person nearby into conceding, claiming that abandoning these people would prove that the Republic stooped as low as the Separatists. 

Tabitha forces the acid bile down her throat, swallowing to lessen the burn as she stares her master's holo down. 

"Alright." The Jedi General eventually relents, taut shoulders slumping and eyebrows furrowing as he gazes at his restless padawan's invisible fidgeting, concealed by a steady stance. 

Fingers twitching atop her biceps as if searching for something to occupy themselves with, the working of her jaw abruptly ceases when instead of the ecstasy and accomplishment she should be feeling her insides stay remarkably numb, contracting slightly every now and then. 

A feeling she can identify too well as disappointment.

Disappointed at what, one might ask and frankly Tabby knows no plausible answer. It's not like she wanted to be called off for being selfish, right? 

_'Right...'_

"But under no circumstances are you to engage these pirates head-on, am I understood?" 

Instantly, Tabitha's hardened young features contort into a lowering scowl/glare when her master engages in another staring contest, leaving the intended implication to hang heavy between them. 

_'Don't let your feelings for Ahsoka compromise you and the ones around you or you might lose more than just her.'_

Like springs the joints in her jaw lock back into their previous grinding motions and her blunt nails dig into her grey sleeves but this time Obi-Wan will not surrender. 

He grows stern in a way he is scarcely required to with Tabitha. No space for false interpretation or counter-argument. 

Not a plea but an order.

"I'm talking to _you_ , Tabitha. Your only objective is to rescue the residents. No excursions that would endanger yourself and your troops. _Am I understood?_ "

"Yes… _Master_."


	4. Opportunity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I'm not dead!  
> It's been hard finding the necessary motivation and ideas to continue writing lately with all that's going on but these past few days I had some free headspace again.  
> So, here's the 4th Chapter. Enjoy!
> 
> (Btw, I hope I can somehow manage to keep this a bit more regular than it has been lately but don't expect too much.)

In essence, the plan is simple. 

One team creates a diversion while the other one moves in, frees the villagers, and leads them into the nearby thicket where they reunite with Team One before evacuating the valley. 

In detail, on the other hand, 'undesirable'  _ (*cough*) _ complications were unveiled. 

One of them being the tricky disregard of their general's orders they have to condone. 

However, Tabitha would rather allow a part of their company to _be_ _engaged_ by the enemy on her terms, with Cody and the rest of the distraction team having the high ground on the mountain ridge on the completely different side of the village, far from the hostages. 

This would give the other half of the company, including herself, enough time to accomplish their part of the plan… and perhaps even snatch some sliver of intel on the Trandoshans' main base of operations. Or wherever the kriff they hold their sick hunts. 

Her window of opportunity is small but it exists and as long as that's the case, Tabitha will do her damn best to use it. 

Ahsoka would do the same for her 

Without putting more friends in even more danger. 

So if Tabitha is going to do this, she'll have to do a good part of it alone which is adverse to Obi-Wan's orders, no doubt about it. 

But if more than two years of dealing with the 501st and their Jedi superiors have taught her anything, it's that you have to bend the rules -sometimes until you break them- to achieve effective results. 

They're already kind of doing so anyway, engaging the enemy after being explicitly told not to. But Tabby is one-hundred percent certain that order was meant exclusively for her. And if that's not just plain infuriating…

Honestly, Tabitha is quite surprised she hasn't been subjected to multiple degrading lectures about proper Jedi behavior. Or putting purpose above emotion. 

Or that she was allowed to continue without him after yesterday in the first place. 

  
  


Foot tapping against the ground at a rapid pace and arms crossed, Tabitha begins to feel like her sour expression and stiff body language have turned to stone thanks to the sheen of grime  _ (and trickles of blood) _ . 

Once or twice someone approached her with questions and she tried to stay placid and kind, she really did but they always returned to their previous positions, seemingly dissuaded after seeing the resting glare in her eyes. 

Tabitha attempted to smooth it out because she felt truly bad for making the others uncomfortable talking to her but she could not do it. 

Despite her several attempts, her attitude remains as steadfast as the mountain to her far-right, prompting Tabitha to simply resign herself to being off-putting indefinitely as they wait for Cody's signal.

A quite obvious signal, regarding that even with both teams being on two opposite sides of a small town, it can be recognized without an ounce of effort. 

Admittedly, the beginning of a blaster fight tends to make some… _ nois _ e. 

The instant the telltale crescive yowls of discharging plasma bolts light up the near horizon, red and blue clashing in a heated quarrel, Tabitha gives the order to move. 

Taking the front, the Jedi Padawan emerges from the bushes with the warm steel of her lightsabers clasped tightly in her freezing hands as the Force sweeps across their projected path along the edge of the village. 

Like antennary extensions of herself, Tabitha lets the Force map out the area through the buzzing energy exuding from every single living cell residing within. 

Slowly but surely, a mental image materializes before her eyes. Every stone, every small slope, and minor climb, every leaf, every insect she can observe as thin silhouettes trailing the alleys they duck into to reach the oppressive mist of their destination. An opaque cloud of troubled presences she dares not brush against. 

Thus, the Jedi commander keeps her third eye far from that, rather straining it to watch out for the varying sharp Force signatures that she knows represent their reptilian opponents while her actual vision stays trained on the path they hurry along. 

Weaving in and out of small alleyways and open dirt roads, their team creeps from cover to cover to reach the cages as fast as possible. 

Their size, however, makes going unseen a tad harder but with the Trandoshans' distracted and the 212th's ability to maneuver around the best of enemies  _ (a virtue made out of necessity) _ it hardly poses a minor inconvenience as they draw closer and closer to their goal. 

And as they do so, Tabitha also starts to grow restless, mind and focus wondering, going to dangerous lengths to dredge up some sort of plan. 

Perhaps a chance encounter with a lone patrol at some point during their impromptu undertaking will grant her a private insight into the Trandoshans' secrets. Or maybe one of the civilians caught a snippet of a revealing conversation. 

Too many unknowns and uncertainties for Tabitha's liking. Yet the girl cannot just split from the group the moment the villagers are out of their cages to take a leisurely stroll around town, _with_ the intention to _be lucky,_ nevertheless _._

...Maybe this was a bad idea after all. 

Everyone else seemed to think -  _ know  _ \- so. They were battered and beaten long before Tabitha decided to serve them on a silver platter to a bunch of low-life pirates. For a lot of maybes, she is willing to trade not just her life but everyone's. The villagers', her men's, perhaps her master's. But what plunges her heart down into the hollow of her stomach is the realization that Ahsoka is another part of the trade. 

Suppose Tabitha walks out of here empty-handed, as clueless and lost  _ and scared _ as before, will she get another chance? 

Or is there truly no way she can be of any help to her childhood friend? 

Her hands begin to throb intensely and encourage the girl to peer down at the limbs clamped around the curved hilts, enabling the hard edges of their bluish steel to cut into her palms. A bit sharper and they would draw blood, sprinkling the pale skin and snow-white knuckles that frame pulsing veins in crimson drops.

Deliberately, the teenager unclamps one tendon after the other and winces when the ache surges for a split second. She lets it rid her brain of the fog of thoughts that had managed to shroud it, enabling her to collect herself and rearrange her focus. All eyes yet again set on their surroundings, Tabitha squashes her pessimistic thought processes, blocking off every upcoming path with silly consolations, and opts to instead follow the straight line of the plan - until an alternative opens itself. 

Rounding corners and half-jogging across straight patches of the road, they arrive at their destination before long - without any trouble or change of plans. 

The soft thuds and clashes of fleshy tissue hitting and rattling metal bars can be heard ahead of time, long before they step onto the plaza. 

Darkened by the mountain, the frantic villagers initially seem to take no notice of the extraction squad sneaking toward them until a handful of people start exclaiming in restrained hope, giving rise to a different sort of clamor. Quieter, fewer whimpers, yet suspicious of the dirty white-orange armor and prominent robes which are known across the galaxy as part of the GAR. 

Tabitha can't blame them.

A few curt hand gestures and the squad splits in two, one faction moving to the left toward the village's center while the other makes a beeline for the rusty holding contraptions. 

With her at the front of the right group, Tabby glances over her shoulder to see the boys of the left securing the connecting pathways, two each with Hawkeye keeping his keen eye on the enemy transport with a pair of army-issue electrobinoculars from a secluded corner of the deserted plaza. 

The brief glimpse allows the line of her shoulders to shift from a tight line to a healthy curve. 

Feeling more than sufficiently guarded, the young commander addresses herself to the task at hand: Breaking the locks. Quick and easy. 

A cursory skim of the cages' locking mechanisms reveals rustic electromagnetic locks with fail-secure latches to contain whoever is kept within in case of power failure. 

Hence, she forgoes the inspection of whatever supplies these obsolete constructions with power and coils the Force around the locks themselves, heeding structural integrities and engineering faults to exploit. 

Deftly applying force to the selected spots is all it takes and an ensemble of identical crunches announces her success, hardly drowning out the stunned gasps and not at all the flitting mash of sensations surrounded and contained by a stringent sense of awe. 

Eyes fluttering open, Tabitha lowers her strained arms she had raised subconsciously, curling her crooked fingers around the hilts of her lightsabers as the Force withdraws from its victimized object and she watches her men pull the busted doors open. Now and then, sparks burst from their hinges, posing the only visible evidence of maimed open circuits besides the crushed scrap that had made up the electromagnetic bolts. 

Before the doors are even fully open, villagers scramble from their confinement and would have dispersed in all possible directions had the troops not thwarted them by  _ (gently) _ grabbing, restraining, and ordering them to remain in the group. They obtain wide-eyed, terrified, and mistrusting looks, but with some more consolation that they had nothing to fear, they were here to help, most of them settled down a bit. Although, Tabby believes it might be more out of self-preservation than actual willingness. Not to mention, it would be rather stupid to go against  _ armed _ soldiers and the civvies seem to share that sentiment. 

Tabitha is about to lend Jumper -one of their aerial troopers who looks painfully out of his depth- a hand with a shrieking Sephi woman when a withered and aged voice hinders her and she becomes increasingly aware of someone's focus resting solely on her.

" _ A Jedi _ ! What is a Jedi doing on Centares?" 

The Jedi Padawan senses no malice nor any feasible good emotion in the male Lannik striding towards her with all the authority and confidence that could fit into his tiny body without spilling out of his downward-sloping, large ears. 

Immediately, the image of Even Piell flashes before her eyes who pranced through the Halls of the Temple as if he owned the place and whose presence filled a room faster than most Jedi Masters'. 

Except for the lack of the scar, this Lannik looks relatively similar to Master Piell: A slack, wrinkly face, old grey eyes, and long ebony hair tied up in a sloppy pigtail that contrasts his lightly tanned skin tone. 

Tabitha's chapped lips part, intending to diffuse what could prove to be a rather awkward situation right when they need it the least, however, all that passes is "Sir-" before the very same interrupts her, quite rudely. 

"Has the Republic finally come to drag the war back to this world?" 

_ 'Alright. Uncalled for but… perhaps too close to the truth.'  _

The elderly man proceeds to caterwaul about the Republic's betrayal of its citizens and the Separatists' equally negligent governance, and if not for the clock ticking thunderously at the back of her skull, Tabby would have found his restraint admirable. She could still not sense a pinch of malice towards her or her troops in particular. Merely resentment for the whole war, both sides. 

Moments like this, in spite of everything, Tabitha wishes for her master. Two years under  _ the Negotiator _ have done a moderate job at improving her diplomatic negotiating skills.

She's okay but far from Obi-Wan, so it was inevitable when the pressure of the situation forced her to act and silence the sullen Lannik rather harshly. 

" **Sir!** " 

Promptly, the village elder falls silent.

"I know you might not trust the Republic. Perhaps you even detest us more than the Separatists. But this isn't about whose side you take. This about your people's survival."

This appears to catch his attention and sober him up as Tabitha sees her opening and swoops in. 

"I do not ask you to forgive or forget, but right now I  _ need  _ your trust and your assistance so we can help you and all these people." The padawan says, gesturing grandly to the crowd that had accumulated around them. 

"And how do you plan to do that, Jedi? You cannot defeat the likes of these hooligans with your battered soldiers." 

"That's why we won't fight them." 

The small man raises a bushy eyebrow but the realization is already written in his narrowed eyes and wafting through the Force. 

"You need to convince your people to leave."

A second long delay before the people burst into a rambunctious flurry of protest that has Tabitha gritting her teeth and anxiously peeking over her shoulder to keep track of the ebbing colors over the housetops. 

"We have lived here for generations and you expect us to simply leave?" The Lannik demands, subduing his fellow villagers who all flock around him consciously as if to back him up. 

Tabitha hardly refrains from rubbing her forehead in agitation. 

"Pirates only remain in one place as long as it's profitable. And the only profit for the Trandoshans here is the potential prey for their hunting games." 

Tabitha makes sure to meet each glare directed at her head-on. 

" _ You _ ." 

Swiftly, they all drop their scowls, averting their eyes. 

"If you leave, at some point they will too and then you can return to your lives here. But if you stay, you will end up as their hunting trophies."

Unlike his fellows, the senior townsman maintains steady eye contact and Tabitha can feel his stare piercing into her skull, looking straight into her thoughts. Still, she stands her ground, hoping her expressive gaze conveys the gravity of her fierce statement. 

It feels like half an eternity before the Lannik expresses some kind of reaction but, luckily, it is the one she desired. 

"You heard her, my friends. We will return but for now, we shall follow the Jedi and her soldiers."

Understandably, the idea still sparks unease but the villagers seem to take his word and trust his judgment if the way they all back down from trying to charge through her men is anything to go by. 

Tabitha almost manages a sigh of relief when a shrill outcry perforates her left eardrum. 

"No, we can't leave!"

_ 'Honestly, do people just not understand that we don't have the time or manpower?!' _

Tabby has to bite the inside of her cheek to swallow the irked shout, instead turning her head  _ very slowly _ to the left where she is met with the sight of the same Sephi woman Tabitha had originally planned to help Jumper with. 

Striding towards them with hastened steps, Tabby just now realizes how compact the other woman is built. 

She barely has two heads on Tabitha, whose body had its last growth spurt at the age of ten, and, unlike the few Sephi she has seen mainly ambling through Coruscant's shops, she has more profound curves. Her physique rounds off that look of a young, kind backwater lady  _ (young for Sephi standards) _ who unfortunately drives Tabitha bonkers right about now. 

Her snow-white hair stands up in chaotic knots, some strands soaked in sweat clinging to her pale purplish complexion. Tears roll from her reddened brown eyes over the crescent-shaped rubies on her cheeks, creating a drying track that is a slightly disturbing hint at how long she must have been crying for. 

Rapidly, Tabby's mood shifts from annoyance to guilt, her queasy stomach doing a sloppy somersault as she harshly swallows the acrid substance in her throat. 

_ 'You're  _ supposed _ to be a Jedi! So by the stars, start acting like one.' _

"Berilyn, dear, what's wrong?" The elderly Lannik steps before the distraught woman, prompting Tabitha to fully turn to the Sephi female. He lays a consoling hand on her forearm that seems to send the already cracked dam crumbling as renewed tears well up in her deer-brown eyes and panicked stammering streams from her lips. Imperceptibly, Tabby reels back from the raw velocity of the words, hardly containing the desperation spurring them on as it slams into the teenager's rigid mental shields.

"Eryk- he's still out there! I told him to hide, and he's not here, and he's still out there..." A wet hiccup interrupts her and gives Tabitha the time to comprehend her words and the sickeningly familiar chunky feeling of a choice regarding life and death settles in the hollow pit of her belly. 

"My poor Eryk… he must be so scared." The Sephi, Berilyn, whimpers, and Tabitha is about to speak up and request more information when a sudden shift in demeanor throws the girl for a loop. 

With the force of a fleet of Dreadnoughts, two frail yet powerful hands grasp at her shoulders, sharp fingertips gouging out her shoulder blades as Tabitha is forced to meet moist but steely eyes. 

"We can't leave, Jedi! I can't leave my son behind! He's all I have!" 

Hardly refraining from twisting out of the mother's relentless grip, Tabby is so fixated on the resolve shining through the cracks of a breaking woman, gluing the crumbling parts back together, the padawan hardly catches sight of Archer, a clone lieutenant, coming up behind the Sephi, the question clear in the tilt of his head and deliberate dip of his barrel. 

Tabitha shakes her head and makes a choice. 

Flat green meets blazing brown and for a moment - just a diminutive moment - Tabby feels a surge of something meaningful as she understands the depth of the mother's will. 

Carved deep into her bones is a rule, a way of life: Nothing can keep her from those she loves. Never would she abandon them. 

And if Tabitha would judge that, what would she be but a hypocrite? 

She came here for Ahsoka and Berilyn wants to stay for her son. 

Perhaps there is a way Tabitha can help both.

Headlong, the padawan drops parts of her shields, allowing all sensations to enter yet suppressing those that dull her senses as she coerces the Force to reach further, past the known plain. Eyelids fluttering shut, dirtied hands come up to wrap around the bare purple skin of the older woman. She dismisses her confusion and silently prays for forgiveness. Unnecessary, for Berilyn, will not feel a thing of the minor ministrations to the bond whose existence even the mother is unaware of. It's a delicate little thing, however inseparable without a doubt and it takes Tabitha less than a minute to locate the raw, frantic energy at the other end, subdued merely by a sheen of hope that his mother will come for him - will come  _ home _ !

"I know where your son is." Tabitha hears herself say, dulled by the dissipating fog of the Force but unconsciously gentle as if she was treading dangerous waters, at risk of setting off a skittish animal. The pressure lifts from her shoulder blades, leaving aching bruises, as Tabby's eyes blink open again. 

"He's okay?" Berilyn gasps and Tabitha nods, lifting the slack hands off her shoulders and letting them slip from hers with what she hopes is a reassuring squeeze. 

"Yes, and I will make sure it stays that way." The ravenette soothes, beckoning Archer over who had kept a strategic distance up until now. 

"But I need to go alone to do that." 

Instantly, a dangerous glimmer enters the Sephi's slumped stance and her face hardens but Tabitha will not be thwarted. 

"You will only endanger your son further by accompanying me." The fifteen-year-old stresses. "I promise you I can - _ I will _ \- bring him back to you but for that, you need to go with my men." She says, gesturing to Archer who has long since come to a stand beside her. Tabby can just feel the disapproving stare boring through the visor but brushes it off with too much ease. All the while, a current of emotion whirls around the distraught mother before her, seemingly persistent in its growth until the Lannik steps in and saves Tabby from giving in to the  ( ~~unethical~~ ) urge demanding her to just force Berilyn to obey. 

"Berilyn, the young Jedi is right." For a second, said Jedi is taken by surprise, the previous distrust still fresh in her mind contrasting starkly against what she bears witness to presently. 

"She will bring Eryk back." He says and Tabitha catches his sideways glance impatiently, growing more agitated the fewer sounds of blaster fire reach her ears. 

"You  _ must _ trust her." 

At first glance, it doesn't appear to be working as the mother's eyes keep dashing from the Lannik to her to Archer and back, and Tabitha almost gives in then. Gritting her teeth and breathing in a lungful of air through her creased nose, the padawan already calls upon that part of the Force and soaks her vocal cords in its power. Merely to be taken by surprise and, consequently, lose her hold as Berilyn complies with the younger girl's request, shoulders heaving with a suffering sigh and lips curling softly. 

" _ Please. _ " 

All she can do for an instant is stare at their receding backs, flabbergasted, but shakes herself out of her stupor before someone could notice and turns to face Archer who has yet to receive his orders (although he's quite certain he knows exactly what his commander will say).

"Archer, you're in charge now." Tabitha begins, prompting the clone lieutenant to give a curt nod. 

"Stick to the plan and get these people out of here. I'll catch up to you as soon as I can." 

There's a slight delay before Archer yet again nods, slow and clearly opposed to the idea but he doesn't raise his concerns. 

He understands. Truly does. Yet, he also understands that the kid hasn't been at the top of her game lately, lacking the childish ease that is just so  _ Tabitha  _ he didn't know existed until now. It's concerning but not crucial enough to deter her. 

_ (That doesn't mean Commander Cody isn't going to learn about it as soon as he can.)  _

Archer sets to leave, march off to where the rest of his brothers have rounded up the civvies near their exit route when meek fingers wrap around the scratched armor of his forearm. Looking down at the hand, Archer's hazel eyes trail up the equally as filthy arm braces before his visor comes to rest on the side of Tabitha's face. 

Merely peeking at the lieutenant in her peripheral vision, the padawan keeps her eyes averted as she adds another order. 

"If I'm not back with the boy when you reach the town's borders, don't wait. Keep going and meet up with the others." 

A precaution, really, but a necessary one, Tabitha thinks. Archer, on the other hand, does not and this time opens his mouth to object, only to be intercepted by the girl who had sensed his disapproval. 

"I will call if I run into some sort of problems but we cannot risk getting caught out in the open. Understood?" 

"Comma-"

"Understood, Lieutenant?" 

Finally, her green eyes snap to his, meeting his stare dead-on as if the helmet was nothing but transpirasteel. 

What he saw doesn't scare him (not that the kid could ever scare him) but it has him swallow further objections and ground out a dutiful "Yes, Commander." 

The hand glides from his wrist and without further interaction, Tabitha sets off in a sprint and launches herself on top of one of the many flat roofs, her mop of jet black hair vanishing behind its stone railing. 

  
  


In one swift movement, Archer turns around while simultaneously whipping out his communicator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I don't get another chance:  
> Merry Christmas (or whatever you're celebrating) and a Happy New Year to all of you!


	5. Choices...

Automatic doors. 

Silent, simple, and far more secure than most hinged doors before their time. Hardly any outer mechanics that can rust and fail at the most inopportune times, yet technicalities that still could. But isn't that just the bittersweet taste of failure? 

Star travel begins with these doors. One of the first inventions a species fabricates before the dawning of more complex things. Automated machines and technology that can sustain and ease life. That, even at its base, is the peak of modern societies.

And yet, each society neglects its duty to maintain what they've invented, letting it corrode until it ceases to function only to be replaced instead of repaired.

Tabitha doesn't understand these kinds of individuals. People in backwater sludge holes who make the acquirement of technology a big hassle but then never bother to keep them up to speed. 

Even something as simple as door maintenance seems to go way above their heads as Tabitha, unfortunately, comes to realize, standing in front of the one door she needs to enter that looks - and works - about as good as Artoo after a mud bath. 

Unlocking the door poses no difficult challenge, doing it quietly on the other hand…

A wince pulls at the coarse skin between her eyebrows, the thin layer of dirt powdering under the strain (making her feel wholly uncomfortable and incredibly filthy) while her lips twist into a snarl. As if the door had done something more to offend her than just squeak, and groan, and rattle its way to victory. Tabby can hear every gear and wire grating against the durasteel casing individually as it shuffles its way open, swallowing the growing silence that arose in the wake of the blasters' destructive wail. 

The walls catch each screeching and seem to bounce it off their fellows ten times louder, leading the peevish padawan to fall back into a crouch and let her sharp gaze scan her immediate surroundings. 

It appears the closer Tabitha draws to the mountain canyon leading out of the valley, the denser the infrastructure of the village becomes. Where houses were barely in each other's proximity at the edge of the forest, entire streets are now lined with three to four one-story houses on each side, pressed neatly against one another. The same goes for the street she's on right now - quite a distance away from the cages - which culminates in another line of houses head-on splitting the road to the right (the direction she came from) and the left (where she had spotted some kind of town square before). 

The houses themselves all look the same except for the tiny decorations, ornaments, and symbols that make them homes. Flat-roofed with chiseled foundations and small windows carved into their rundown but sturdy walls. 

No sign of any threat but also, Tabby mentally sighs, peeking through the curtained window of the home she is about to invade, no sign of the boy. Of course, she knows that he is in there, his Force signature frankly prominent now that she's aware of it. 

Over the time it took for her to get here, his presence barely twitched beyond its seemingly natural trilling hum, intercepted now and then by slight hiccups. 

Mind you, Tabitha has taken her sweet time to get here, as horrible as it sounds, looking for… something. With the firefight over, the girl had thought she would get lucky and cross paths with a lonely guard or patrol and 'convince' them to reveal some sensitive information about their base operations. 

No luck with that, though. Or anything else for that matter. Perhaps she should start listening to her master whenever he says there's no such thing as luck. 

She would have continued her search for a few more minutes had she not suddenly found herself near Berilyn's home and the frightened boy hidden inside. Close enough to detect the searing cold churning under the crumbling snug sheet of faith that had her faltering. 

It was then that she realized:

Tabitha can't help both.

The kid or Ahsoka? 

A stranger who Tabitha had promised to return to his family unharmed or her best friend who she had promised to forever be with? 

Tabitha was torn. 

At that moment, Tabby felt herself being pulled in two separate directions by two pairs of hands as two disembodied voices wrangled for her attention. The hands pulling her forward belonged to a voice, thick with emotion, that sounded distinctively like Anakin telling her that Tabby was Ahsoka's friend, she couldn't abandon her like everybody else, she'll lose her if she walked away now. 

But then there was that other voice, rich in its accent and infuriatingly lacking the exigent tone of the first one while still maintaining its urging undertone, and it spoke of a Jedi's duty to the people - spitting her earlier words back at her -, about forbidden attachments and clouded judgment that keep her from doing what is expected of her. The hands accompanying it tried to steer her backward, toward the boy, but Tabitha found herself rooted to the spot, breath catching in her throat as the weight of another choice settled on her chest and threatened to crush her lungs. 

Never before had a choice impacted her like this. 

Never before had it sat in between her ribs like a growing fire threatening to choke her as her lungs started to burn and her heart started to clench in order to protect itself from the vicious embers rising to her mouth and eyes. Air seemed like a hundred million parsecs away as her knees began to shake and her hands trembled. 

Right then and there, amid enemy territory, on top of an empty rooftop with no alternatives, the teen sank to her knees, groping at the top of her skull before fisting a bunch of greasy hair in her hands, tears framing her bottom eyelids but not falling. Time slowed - or maybe it didn't - but it hardly mattered as her mind and heart held a gruesome battle that would leave no victors. 

It could have been seconds or minutes when the voices and hands tearing her apart from the inside out we're drowned out by something else. 

Another ghostly touch, so much more gentle, appeared to unfurl the fists ripping out her hair and guide them to her lap where all she could do was stare at her soft palms as the mellow voice of her  _ (missing) _ friend -  _ her family - _ rises to her ears and tells her to do what she would have done in her situation: 

_ "Help those in need. I can take care of myself but he might not…." _

Tabby wanted to disagree but she couldn't. 

_ "We'll see each other again. Don't worry." _

In the end, Tabitha succumbed to those words, picked up the pieces of herself, and patched herself back together shabbily, feeling like she had just been catapulted back to square one. 

One long look in the direction she itched to go and she went the one that she needed to go.

_ (Just like everybody else had chosen to do.) _

The thunderous grating stops, wrenching Tabby away from her thoughts, and with a sigh (because that's all she seems to be able to do lately to express her feelings in a contained way) she discovers that it could only have been mere moments since she had pressed the button to open the damaged door.

Sharpening her senses again, the padawan checks one last time to make sure the streets are still clear before she steps over the threshold and into the entrance hallway. Naturally, when the door closes behind her, it's with substantially less noise which draws an annoyed eye roll out of the teen as she wipes off the clammy sweat accumulating in her palms on the fabric of her trousers. The hallway is short, the wall to her left adorned with paintings and a dark oak wood cupboard which brandishes a couple of flat-holos. 

Walking closer, Tabitha picks up the first frame, coming face-to-face with two large black eyes speckled with little pools of honey beaming up at her from a smiling purple face, freckles dotted all over his sharp nose in stark contrast to his platinum-blonde mop of cropped hair.  _ 'Must be Eryk.'  _ Tabby thinks and peeks over at the other picture which portrays the kid standing between Berilyn and another Sephi man. Pinkish skin, long blond hair, and kind black eyes underlined by two identical lines of star-shaped rubies. He carries an uncanny resemblance to Eryk which probably makes him the boy's father.

Carefully lowering the frame back to its original position, Tabby lets her eyes roam the rest of the corridor, noting the two doors on the left and the one straight at the end. Bedrooms and refresher, perhaps, because the open passageway to the living area is located behind her and connects to a small kitchenette at the back. 

For the fraction of a second, the young Jedi focuses on the presence that led her here, hoping to learn its exact whereabouts, only to be forced to stifle a groan when parts of it seem to be drifting around in every spot of the house, signifying the endless amounts of memories held within the home's confines, good and bad. She can feel them scurrying around her shields, weak enough to be quelled but a nuisance nevertheless. 

The old-fashioned way it is then. Starting in his room - if she manages to locate it - since that would be the first place any child would think of as a... let's say,  _ mediocre _ hiding spot. 

Tabitha walks forward and opens the first door, humming when she comes to face the 'fresher. The shower's door stands wide open, ruling the entire cramped space out as a hiding spot. No other nooks he could possibly squeeze into unless he somehow managed to shove himself into the hanging drawer over the sink. 

Letting the door close again with a, thankfully, silent whoosh, Tabitha steps to the right and thumbs the small red switch to this door's immediate right. Not a second later, the sight of a mess greets her and Tabby knows she's in the right spot. Toys and clothes litter the rug, the wooden wardrobe to the right of her stands open a gap, the single bed in the far left corner is unmade, and the desk a few feet in front of it a proper mess with all kinds of utensils strewn across. 

Gingerly, the teen steps into the room, and upon hearing the door close, shoots a cursory glance around. There is no one under the desk - not that she thought there would be -, so the only logical hiding spots would either be the wardrobe or the bed. 

Regardless, the boy would never emerge out of his own volition, Tabitha thought with a thoughtful glance at the lightsabers resting on her hips, if she was visibly armed. And ultimately, she wants him to come out because he feels like he can because dragging a scared child through a village, that at this point should be teeming with battle-hardened Trandoshans, would stir up more trouble than they could afford. 

With one slick movement, Tabitha unclips the lightsabers from her belt, carefully maneuvering herself over to the desk in the meantime. Twin thunks reverberate throughout the room as Tabitha deliberately puts a little more force into the movement of laying them down before she steps away, glancing over her shoulder and straining her ears to pick up some sort of reaction. 

Nothing.

"Eryk?" The padawan calls out gently, plodding over to the bed first. 

"Eryk, are you here?" 

Pushing away a toy starfighter with the side of her foot, Tabitha slowly kneels next to the bed and cautiously grasps the edge of the sheet. Pulling it back gradually, she peeks into the dark and dusty abyss of the bed, blinking rapidly when a cloud of dust assaults her eyes and forces her to withdraw. Her vision blurs slightly with irritated tears and she hastily wipes them away on her sleeve before ducking her head under the bed again for a brief second. 

Nothing but dust bunnies and forgotten items. 

Leaning back on her knees, Tabitha calls out yet again. "I'm not here to hurt you, Eryk." 

Climbing to her feet, a quiet cough bursts from her lips which she quickly extinguishes as she twists around to face the wardrobe. 

"Your mother, Berilyn, she sent me to find you." She continues softly and trudges forward, throttling her speed slightly when a low knock sounds from her destination, followed by a muffled gasp. 

"She's worried, you know? Wouldn't have left for the world if I didn't promise to bring you back to her." The words left a bitter taste on her tongue the moment she let them slip but Tabby doesn't even try to figure out why. 

Hyperfocused on the ajar door, Tabitha reaches out and wraps her fingers around the delicate wooden knob, intent on nudging the door open when a sudden warning shoots through her brain and, in a flurry of short-lived adrenaline, she jumps backward. The door misses the tip of her nose by a hair's breadth, a strong gust of wind brushing over her sweaty skin just as her widened green eyes meet panicked black ones. They briefly flash down to her right arm which had, to the girl's chagrin, flown to the small of her back, ready to unsheathe the knife tucked securely in the waistband of her pants, covered by the flap of her tunic. Forcibly dislodging her fingers from the leather hilt, she brings both her hands up to shoulder level, palms outward in what she hopes to be a placating gesture. 

"It's okay, Eryk. I won't hurt you."

She takes a step forward.

"Stay away from me!" The boy exclaims the second her foot leaves the floor, and Tabby grimaces.  _ 'Okay, stupid idea...' _

The older girl backs up a few steps and puffs out a relieved breath when she sees the cowering boy relax the tiniest of fractions. 

"Okay, alright, I'm gonna stay right here. I won't come any closer. Good?" 

The boy nods after a long moment, uncertainty clear in his moist eyes, and Tabitha waits, recognizing the beginning of a question forming. 

"Who are you? Where's Mom? She said she'd come for me. Is she alright?" 

Multiple questions but that's fine as long as it calms him down. 

"My name is Tabitha." She begins calmly. "Your mother is fine. She's with my friends right now, getting to safety with the rest of the village. I'm here to bring you to them." 

Tabitha puts on a soothing smile as she crouches down to his level and outstretches her hand. 

An offer that he does not yet seize.

"The bad men…. They were here. I heard them..." His small voice trails off as he yet again looks at her with fearful eyes brimming with tears. The smile on her face falters just a tad, invisible to outsiders but painfully apparent to herself. 

_ "No, you chose! Stop being so kriffing selfish, Tabitha!" _ Ahsoka's voice yells inside of her head, doing nothing to alleviate the burden that makes itself at home on her tense shoulders. 

"I know. I won't let them hurt you." Tabitha all but whispers. A pitiful sound that scarcely traverses the room but is still somehow audible over Eryk's hitched breathing.

"Promise?"

"I  _ promise _ ."

Slowly but surely, Eryk straightens from his fetal position in the closet, extricating one stumpy little limb after the other. Somehow  _ that…  _ that is what almost makes Tabitha gag. He's basically a toddler, baby fat still clinging to his puffy reddened contours and awkwardly shuffling over to her on his short legs. And still, Tabitha was more than ready to let him wallow here, afraid and alone, a little longer. 

_ 'I'm a horrible person.' _ The teen sighs inwardly whilst bolstering the reassuring smile on the outside. 

The moment his chubby fingers land in the palm of her hand, she closes hers around them and offers him a gentle squeeze. 

"Okay, perfect." The teen huffs, thinking about how to proceed. 

All they need to do now is get out. Should be easy. 

However, if Eryk's right, then Trandoshans must have noticed their lack of prisoners by now, making the streets rather hazardous. 

So, the roofs… 

Climbing to her feet yet again, Tabby keeps her hand firmly around Eryk's as she makes her way back to his desk and sweeps up her lightsabers, reclipping them to her belt and purposely ignoring the inquisitive look on the kid's face. 

In under a minute, the two of them are back on the street where Tabitha hefts the little guy onto her back and tells him to hold on tightly. That's all the warning he gets before the Jedi propels them up onto the rooftop with the Force's aid. 

There, Tabby steers them toward the edge of the town where she suspects the rest of her squad and civilians to be by now, keeping a firm grip on Eryk's legs to secure him on her back as she dashes across different rooftops, deliberately limiting her vision to the path in front of her.

It's difficult and exhausting and she's not as fast as she could be without him as a burden fastened to her neck but they make quite a bit of progress, driving the padawan to believe that they might actually make it out of the village unseen. 

Of course, merely the thought of it manages to jinx it. 

The shouts erupting from somewhere below are her first and only warning before the compressed heat of a blaster bolt whizzes past her head by less than a tenth of an inch. The pure shock of adrenaline and panic surging through her veins sends Tabby stumbling, a cry of fear in her left ear reminding her of her passenger and allowing her to maneuver them so his head is tucked under her chin just milliseconds before they hit the ground. 

With a grunt, Tabby takes the brunt of the initial fall, only tightening her hold on the boy when their previous momentum flings them further, and suddenly the hard stone of the roof is gone. 

The kid is screaming but all Tabitha can hear is the air whisking past her ears as they plunge toward the unforgiving ground  _ fast _ and she knows she has to do something. 

And somehow -  _ somehow -  _ she manages to halt their descent hardly one foot above the ground, a thick cloud of the Force serving as some sort of trampoline as they stop  _ dead  _ in their tracks. 

The kid stops yelling but Tabitha ignores him as she commands the Force to right them and slowly lets herself drop to the floor, landing on her feet before taking off in a wild sprint when another shot embeds itself in the wall of the alley they are now in. 

_ 'Dank Ferrik' _ , Tabitha could have dealt with this  _ (and even get what she came for) _ before picking up the kid. But now she quite literally has her hands full with him and without the use of her hands, she will never be able to fight them off. 

Yet she won't be able to outrun them either, she realizes as she skids around another corner, narrowly dodging multiple shots from their pursuers. They were close but not that close and even if, leaving now would lead the Trandoshans straight to the rest. 

Tabitha needs to draw them away but not with the kid here. They need to split up. The kid needs to go… alone. 

With a patchwork plan in place, Tabitha draws as deep a breath as her stinging lungs allow and beckons the Force yet again, diverting some of it to her speed and stamina and barreling the majority into the wall of the house they pass. She can hear every little crack splitting the stone as if she was pressing her ear right up against the wall until she is suddenly deafened by the thunderous implosion of the wall crumbling in on itself, drowning out even the screams of the Trandoshans. 

Still, Tabitha does not stop because neither will they. They will find a way over the rocks and resume their hunt in a few minutes, so she has to be quick. 

The mouth of another alley, just ahead. There they can hide so Tabitha can explain. 

She has skimmed past the house's corner and slid to her knees within nanoseconds, peeling the little fingers off her neck before they even come to a full stop. 

Eryk protests the motion, pressing his face harder against the wet spot on her heaving chest as his back shakes with muffled sobs. After a bit of fumbling, the teen coerces him to let go and instantly grabs him by the shoulders to meet his tearful gaze. 

Tabby hates doing this to him, leaving him alone yet again, but he has a better chance of surviving this if she can distract the Trandoshans long enough. 

"Eryk, listen to me: You need to be brave now." 

Her voice is shaky.  _ Must be the adrenaline _ , she thinks. Eryk remains silent except for his erratic intakes of breath. 

"There's a farm… straight ahead." She continues in between heavy pants, pointing in its general direction. "Do you know it?" 

Eryk stills, evidently hesitant or too scared to answer, so Tabitha strengthens her grip on his shoulders. 

"Eryk!" 

He nods. 

"Good, good." Tabby releases a breath of relief before quickly sliding her hand down his arm to his hand. Guiding it upward to face her palm up, her other hand slips into her waistband and pulls out the knife - a present from Cody. 

Without hesitation, she lays the hilt into his palm and closes his fingers around it. It's way too big for his tiny hands and too hefty for his lanky arms but this way he'll have something to protect himself. 

"Run there. As fast as you possibly can." A crash from somewhere on the street has both of them flinch. "Once you're there keep running, along the mountainside into the forest. And if you see men in white and orange armor, go to them. Your mom will be with them. Understood?" 

"I'm scared." Is Eryk's whispered response to which Tabby shakes her head and plasters a comforting smile on her grim face. 

"I know you are but you have to be strong now. For your mom." 

Another crash, another stone in their protective barricade gone. 

"I know you can do it." 

Albeit with great reticence, Eryk's cropped hair bobs up and down once which is all the confirmation she needs before she clambers to her feet and herds him toward the opposite exit. 

"Whatever you do,  _ don't stop running _ , okay?" 

"Okay…"

They're getting through, Tabitha can feel it. 

"Good. Now go!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year everyone!


	6. ... and their Consequences

_Oh_ , and go Eryk does. 

Tabitha takes all of five seconds to admire the speed with which the kid's little stumps of legs carry him, whilst also praying that he will be alright before the padawan swivels around on the spot. 

The crashes and thunks of rocks dislodging and rolling away grow quicker and quieter with every passing second, leaving Tabitha with very little time to lay some much-required finishing touches to her meager plan. 

She has got to distract the Trandoshans and for that, she needs to be seen. 

But she cannot make it obvious or they'll catch on too early. A setup is what she requires. Something credible that will keep the odds, if not in her favor, at least balanced and steer the confrontation in the right - or more accurately, in this case, _wrong_ \- direction. 

_Perhaps even…_

Jogging back toward the opening she had entered from, Tabitha presses herself against the wall and peers around the corner, scanning her surroundings hastily. Immediately, her sight falls onto the rubble barricade that had once made up someone's house, shattered pieces of furniture and cloth jutting out of it at crazy angles. Perforated with new clefts, the stability of the already precarious structure begins to deteriorate enough so that she is able to glimpse green- to brown-scaled heads over the jagged boulders. 

A bemused frown creeps onto her face as she performs another mental probe of the area beyond the barrier. Three harsh shadows swell dangerously with something akin to lust as their perverted impetus. Three precise dark imprints on an otherwise hazy sheet of flimsi. However, some are missing, faded away and lost to sight during the insufficient period she had ignored them. She's 200-percent sure that there were a lot more than three hunters involved in their pursuit. The amount of blaster fire at least indicated so. 

"Son of a blaster!" The teen curses under her breath and tosses one withering look over her shoulder to where Eryk vanished behind the - forthwith - sparsely populated house front. 

She can only pray…

Shaking her head to rid herself of any distractions that could get her killed, Tabitha peers around the bend again, reassuring herself that she's still adequately covered at the moment, before darting across the road. Igniting the emerald blade of her right lightsaber with an easy flick of her wrist, Tabby skips the two steps under a random door she picked and drives the energized tip straight into its control panel, cutting approximately four inches deep until molten wires spew a handful of sizzling sparks. 

At first, the buzz of her comlink flaring up blended in with the din all around her until a voice she had dreadfully expected shreds the illusion. 

"Commander, come in!" 

_'Oh, for fuck's sake. Not now…'_

"Now's really not the time, Cody." Tabitha grinds out, thumbing off the hissing blade and peering anxiously towards the barricade.

There's no second of silence or any audible signs of relief before Cody thunders on, all business and commander-like would it not be for the extra stiffness to his words. 

"What are you doing?" He demands over the clamor she can hear in the background.

Glaring at the little device on her wrist, Tabitha answers. "Saving a little boy. It's what we came here for." 

"Alone?! Tabitha, we came her under strict orders-" 

"You mean _I_ came here under those orders..." The girl interrupts him. "...but we both know they're a load of shit." 

This time his only response is a burst of static that enables Tabby to focus on the Trandoshans' progress for a second. 

The rubble wall is starting to thin. A few more dislodged stones and it'll fall completely. 

Furthermore, the other Trandoshans are still nowhere to be found, causing Eryk's odds to wane rapidly. Tabitha has to do something. 

She can do something now. 

Thus she breathes deeply through her nose and forces her voice to drop into a calmer pitch.

"Cody, listen." She starts. "I sent the boy to the farm at the western mountain. His mother is with you. Pick him up and get out of here." 

White noise is the only reply she gets for a second but she knows Cody. He'll at least follow the first portion of her plan without objection. 

"We're close. I'll dispatch a squad to escort his mother there." The clone commander relents eventually, and Tabby would have heaved a sigh of relief had he not continued. "Where are you now?"

" _No_. Cody, your priorities are the civilians. Get them and the rest of the men to the RV. I'll catch up once I'm clear." 

"Tabitha-!"

" _Do not_ come here. That's an order, Commander."

With that, Tabitha closes the line, choking around the sour taste pulling rank leaves on her tongue, and waits. 

Just then, the voiceless but noisy silence is promptly overcome and overshadowed by the dying rumbling of the rubble barrier. 

A flinch pierces her tight muscles and she permits an expression of desperation to slither onto her face as she thrusts out the same hand still enclosed around the curved hilt and hits the button that would usually unlock the door. Predictably, it doesn't now, shutting her out of the safety patiently waiting inside even as she smashes the button over and over again. 

Not till her ears pick up a loud multilayered growl coming from her right does she cease to play that frantic little girl and switches her attentive gaze toward the free pathway her opponents have created. 

There tower the three hulking figures, at their front the tallest Trandoshan she has ever seen. A heavy armored vest rests on his shoulders, his lower body not any less protected with only his head, arms, and feet bare, showing off light grey scales mattered with irregular patterns of khaki and yellow flecks and streaks.

"We are in luck, boysss ~" The leader of their little troop hisses, clacking the blaster - a type she hasn't yet seen - against the armor of his chest plate.

Gleaming orange eyes bore into hers, sparkling in the harsh light of the sun. 

Her stomach contracts abruptly, shoving nauseating acid up her throat, the previous sour taste all but forgotten, and Tabitha has to fight every sense of self-preservation to defy his gaze. Something else still must have flashed through her stare, something that appears to amuse him even more, for his smile expands, displaying entire rows of fangs that grow increasingly more menacing the further they advance. 

The pointer finger of her left hand twitches, a silent beckon of the additional hilt dangling from its strap, and in the sliver of a second, the bluish steel apparatus lands in the palm of her hand with little to no sound. 

Yet, the Trandoshan leader spots the shift in posture accompanying the readying of her second weapon - even before she fully turns her angled body to confront the hunter trio. 

The tone of his slitted eyes seems to change, then. Orange darkens, like colored iron rusting upon undergoing a reaction with the pinch of anticipation her actions incite. 

He wants this. Is prepared for a hunt. Craves it like others crave sweets.

A painful swallow ripples down her gullet, harsh enough to be visible even to the naked eye, although Tabby tries to cover it by shooting the three grown lizards an intense glare. 

If looks could kill, those guys would be nothing but a mashed pile of ash. 

"And here I believed the Togruta girl wasss the only lucky catch…" 

A forked tongue flicks out briefly, running over the edge of his maw before retreating, deliberately dragging over the pointed fangs. 

Gnarled noises of agreement come from his companions, slightly smaller and leaner, nearly identical yellow eyes and orange scales, whereas those of the right one are mottled with dark brown. The same guy carries the exact type of blaster as his leader, rather clunky with a cylindrical muzzle, however, the left one is armed with what Tabitha believes to be a net gun, slim and lanky with a flattened front making up something along the lines of a square garnished with five muzzle-like contrivances. Electrified too, Tabby notes offhandedly after catching a glimpse of the power source attached to its butt. 

  
  


In hindsight, that should've been Tabitha's most crucial clue.

Yet, outgunned and outnumbered, the padawan seethes seeing the smug smirk teasing her. 

Knuckles growing bone-white with the tightening of her fists, teeth grinding until they ache, weight shifting even further onto her toes ready to pounce on the _shabuir_ standing a few feet down the street, Tabitha's mind draws a blank. 

Every thought, idea, and strategy she had until now is sucked away. A vacuum reigns, one that takes less than a second to flood with a cold burning sensation, crippling logic and hard-fought equilibrium. 

The only things that had stopped her from running off on wild bantha chase alone, careless and selfish, immediately upon arriving in town. 

"Where is she?" 

Tabitha hears herself growl, a sound so foreign to her vocal cords they tingle and itch the moment the question slipped past her pursed lips. 

The large Trandoshan doesn't budge. Grip and posture lax, smirk steady and sharp, and by all means unphased. Even his compatriots hardly stiffen, merely shuffling their weapons around in their three-taloned hands. 

The blood freezes in her veins, evaporating the heat it had carried before into little plumes of smoke, as the realization hits her. 

Tabitha barely has a nanosecond to admonish herself for the foolishness in her actions, before all hells break loose. 

"Don't worry, girly. You'll be joining her ssoon enough." 

The hissed words evoke a myriad of things to happen at once. 

The Force contorts and twists, jolting through her core and firing up every dozing synapse in her brain whilst overloading those that have not rested for over a day. 

Three weapons raise, however solely one charges up with a low whine. Neon yellow light illuminates the five muzzles of the net gun Tabby had heeded for mere seconds to eliminate the possibility of a threat _at that time_. 

Tabitha jumps. 

The Force's warning a sheer enhancement to the prickling energy thriving inside of her, Tabitha takes advantage of the minor space the upper step provides, gaining momentum by rushing forward. Landing on both feet at the very edge, Tabitha launches herself upward, amplifying her movements as she goes. 

Crackling electricity grazes past her feet only seconds after takeoff and Tabby does not need to look to see the stun-net nailing itself against the door. Can't, frankly. Flipping midair, straight above the Trandoshans' craned head, Tabitha sets her eyes on a spot a few feet behind them. 

Landing in a roll, Tabby transitions into a slide, feeling the hum of her lightsabers before she hears them plowing through the ground, the pumping of blood drowning out everything beyond. Leaving two charred rifts in the dirt, the traction slows her velocity and before she even fully stops, the Jedi padawan yanks the left blade out, uses her momentum to twist onto her knees, and thrusts out her left hand, releasing an unhinged Force wave that catapults all three men back. 

Net-gun-guy crashes head-first into the stairs she had just occupied, slumping into an unconscious heap on top with his weapon crushed beneath him. 

_'That takes care of that.'_

As Tabitha finds her footing, so do her adversaries, faces twisting into ghastly snarls at the state of their friend. 

The Force constricts instances before the first red bolt flies toward her. 

Toward her right biceps, more specifically.

A swift swing of her crystal lightsaber redirects the projectile back to the dipshit who thought he could exploit her injury. The shot hits home, a cry of pain emerging from the orange-brown-scaled Trandoshan as he sags forward, clutching his side. 

Taking advantage of his temporary frailty, Tabby wraps the Force around as an invisible manifestation of her hand and hauls him forward, simultaneously deflecting another pellet and forcing the leader to retreat behind a toppled garbage container. 

Soon after, the padawan charges which does not go unnoticed by the injured hunter. She can hear his fangs grating against one another as he attempts to recover some semblance of resilience, pulling back his fist and spreading his legs to steady his stance. In the last second, Tabitha drops to the floor, some strands of her jet black hair catching in the gust of air following the fist overhead as she neatly slides through the broad gap between his legs. 

Dragging both lightsabers through his calves with the same ease she would feel while cutting through butter, the scream of pure agony above her seems unusually muted to her ears. With only a slight twinge in her belly, she springs to her feet just as he falls to his knees, flips the hilt of her blue saber, and drives the sizzling light through her opponent's heart in one fluid motion. 

Her back turned to the dying man, the scream transforms into a wet gurgling noise before dying with its originator whose lifeless corpse collapses into a bloody, burned mess of limbs. 

Another scream arises in its wake. One so intense it resonates even within the Force as ferocious ripples slamming into her, endeavoring to granulate her. Gradually pivoting on the spot, the glare on her complexion softens a tad upon recognizing the leader's expression, her head jerking down to the body at her feet whose face stays forever distorted in a horrifying grimace. 

"This can end right here…" Tabby speaks up, taken aback by the silky smooth tone dripping from her voice. Raising her head, she blinks into the face of the raging wildfire holding her at gun's point, flipping her lightsaber back around whilst keeping it lowered. 

"If you tell me where you bring your captives." 

His retort is instant, fueled by such hatred, Tabitha has half a mind to regret forbidding Cody to send support.

"The only way thiss will end iss with you on my wall!" 

Predicted but not preferred.

Shifting to her opening stance, Tabitha lifts the green lightsaber above her head, the tip aimed at her adversary, whilst she positions the cyan one to guard her torso. 

"Your move." 

Breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, the heartbeat pulsating against her jaw calms, beating in sync with the perpetual ebb and flow of the Force surrounding her, guiding her to observe just the right spots.

The Trandoshan's entire weight shifts onto his taloned toes and the grip on his blaster slackens, surprising Tabitha, who dwells in the same position except for a minor shift of her right wrist as she bends it into a perfect position for a diagonal downward strike - should it be necessary. 

Like a hungry Rancor towards his prey, he abruptly charges, putting all his momentum into his shoulders and making it way too easy to alter her stance at the last moment. Seconds before impact, she spins out of his way, leaving her left foot planted securely on the ground which effortlessly hooks around his ankle, surrendering him to his full weight as it sends him plummeting to the floor. 

Unfazed even as his contorted face rapidly approaches the dirt, the larger male swiftly clutches the smoking barrel of his gun in one hand and stabs the sharp claws on the rest of his limbs into the ground, negating his speed almost immediately. 

He leaps at her again but instead of throwing himself at her, he flings the blaster at her with remarkable precision, forcing Tabitha to finally release her downward strike. In a flash of blinding light, the sleek metal weapon clashes with the emerald blade. Upon collision, it splits into two, both halves shooting past her ears by inches. 

For an instant or two, Tabitha is stunned, not having anticipated that move, which gives the hunter enough time to act. 

He slams into her little body with full force, thrusting all air out of her lungs as he briefly lifts her above his head before knocking her to the harsh ground. Her back and ribs flare in a short burst of pain, lungs gulping down air and dust, convulsing in curt coughs, but she doesn't stay down for long. Stemming her hands against the floor (and her lightsabers) above her head, the teen kicks out her legs, relishing the grunt of pain she hears upon impact with his stomach whilst also exploiting the attained propulsion to cartwheel backward onto her feet.

Immediately upon recovering her footing, Tabitha shifts to offensive, swinging both lightsabers at her opponent. One aimed at his chest while the other sweeps at his legs, she forces him back to the middle of the street, giving herself more space to breathe before attacking yet again only to be blocked and thrown off by an expertly timed blow to her wrists with his forearms. 

For minutes, that is how the fight continues. Trading blows that rarely inflict more than a future bruise or papercut, gaining and losing ground in an endless stalemate.

Sweat beads on Tabitha's forehead, breath coming out in short pants, arms trembling with rising fatigue and Tabitha dodges another fist flying towards her head, hopping back to increase the space between them. 

The padawan can make out the slight slump in the hunter's shoulder and the trivial increase in the rise and fall of his chest, displaying a fraction of the exhaustion she experiences. 

At this rate, she'll tire herself out in an attempt to incapacitate him instead of killing him. 

But killing him would mean forfeiting her only chance to find Ahsoka…

She can do this. She just has to be smarter. 

She just has to fight a little dirtier, Tabitha thinks with a brief glance around, watching the dust they kicked up settle. 

It's an ancient trick but still quite effective against every living being. Even he should fall for it. 

They've come to a standoff now that Tabitha recoiled, trying to gauge each other's next move. Ostensibly, the Trandoshan expects her to open up with the offense, his own stance transitioning into a defensive one meant to catch whatever she throws at him.

Tabitha has to fight vehemently to keep the delighted smirk off her expression. 

Without a second of hesitation, the young Jedi surges forward again, lifting one lightsaber in the telltale position of a backhand slash whilst keeping the other tucked close to her body. 

She sees the change the lizard performs in order to seize her hand and can't help the tiny grin teasing her lips. 

The lush green blade recedes into the kyber-crystal and Tabitha yanks her hand close to her body, taking a gleeful second to watch the genuine shock blooming on the hunter's face before her left shoulder barrels into his chest, the bone crying out in protest. As he staggers back, head angled downward with a pained grimace, Tabitha sweeps her cyan lightsabers across the ground, slicing deep into the amassed dust. 

A thick cloud of dirt sprouts from the gaping fissure, propelling directly into the Trandoshan's face, eliciting hacking coughs to spew from his maw and encouraging him to rub his hands across tender, teary eyes. 

Wasting no more than a second, Tabby gathers whatever the Force would offer in the palms of her outstretched hands before launching every ounce of it at her weakened enemy. 

To his endless shock and misfortune, the sheer amount of power slamming into his unguarded body hurls him across the entire width of the street where his unexpected flight is ultimately 'cushioned' by the very same garbage container he had taken up as cover minutes before. 

Even from her spot in the center of the street, Tabby can hear the disgusting crunch of bones breaking upon impact, however, the girl refuses to pity him. 

She had offered him mercy in exchange for information but he spurned her offer.

Everything that happens now is on him.

In the blink of an eye, before the hunter could come to his senses, Tabitha is on him. Her whole body weight pressing down on the joints in his legs, the fervent blue of her lightsaber flickers dangerously over his stomach and hands - more than willing to relieve him of either - joined shortly after by the vibrant green blade illuminating the heated glare on the downed man's expression. 

"You're beaten." 

Tabitha growls, pressing the side of her lightsaber impossibly closer to his jugular. 

"Tell me what I want to know." 

The demand is laced in the power of a Force suggestion, sounding somewhat transcendental even to her own ears as she stares deep into his eyes, unflinching as she wills her labor to bear fruits. 

Scaled skin tightens around his features and he shakes his head tersely as if to shake her off, away from the vulnerable parts of his mind. Unexpectedly, he jerks forward - lacking the strength to buck her off - and bares his fangs, snapping at her, thus making her recoil. 

Tabitha's jaw locks, refusing to back down any further even as he opens his foul mouth in what she knows will be an angry riposte. 

_"Thiss isss only the beginning of a thrilling hunt!"_

His voice sounds so distant all of a sudden, as if the whole street was submerged in water, and Tabitha takes just one second too long to comprehend the reason why. 

One second too long to detect the glance over her shoulder.

One second too long to understand the triumphant pitch to his voice and its meaning. 

Entire three seconds is the amount of time it takes for her to whirl around, eyes widening to full-size saucers. 

Three seconds before the front of her head explodes in pain, blinding white stars bursting across her vision, promptly extinguished as her body hits the floor hard, leaving her in absolute darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation:  
> Shabuir (Mando'a) = extreme insult; *jerk* but much stronger


	7. Caged

Everything is so loud. 

There's a low rumbling coming from… _somewhere_ Tabitha can't pinpoint because her head just won't stop spinning, won't stop thumping in tune with that obnoxious beat pulsing through her body… won't stop _listening_ to the deafening remnants of senseless weeping, incoherent whimpering, _mad shouting_ _of someone's name_ ** _(her name?)_** lounging at the brittle edge of her hearing, following her from the deep abyss of unconsciousness. 

_Too loud. Too much. She can't-_

A strained moan sets her throat alight, scraping against the sandpaper-like tissue without warning, leaving in its wake a coppery tang spreading across the roof of her mouth. 

It finally draws her focus away from all the conflicting noises thundering in- and outside of her skull and to the pulsing pain coursing through her entire body. 

Mainly her head. 

It feels like a gundark decided to slowly dig every single one of its claws into her forehead. 

Tabitha has had a mild concussion before and this throbbing mess of a headache comes awfully close to that. 

There's also something tacky dry crusted to the… right side of her face? The side that isn't squished against some warm panels but left to weather in the musty climate of wherever she is. 

She might want to figure that out since it clearly cannot be the medbay - _the lacking scent of antiseptic in the air gave it away_ \- or anywhere remotely safe - _honestly, she got pounded in the head by a Trandoshan_. But her battered head is still striving to bring the world to a standstill behind her closed eyelids and her limbs are littered with massive contusions pinning them to the metallic floor, and all in all, Tabitha is way too tired to even bother at the moment. 

Perhaps she can just keep her eyes closed for a few more minutes, relax the building tension, let her flagging mind drift off… 

  
  


Suddenly, her heart lurches, skipping a beat before madly pumping blood into her aching extremities. With her hazy consciousness still caught halfway between the alluring fog of sleep and sharp alertness, Tabitha, at first, doesn't understand why her body would punish her like that. Until her hearing eventually catches up with her body's instincts, allowing the same rumbling as before to pass her tender eardrums, albeit a bit louder and a lot less grating. 

Initially, Tabby had brushed it off as the sound of an engine of sorts - a ship's most likely - but now, if she legitimately focused on it, she could feel its vibrations under the panels mashed against her face. 

_'So what the hell is that?'_ Tabitha grumbles to herself.

Partially curious but mostly aggravated and perhaps a little unnerved, the exhausted girl grudgingly disperses sleep's final residues and attempts to pry her eyelids open. 

With much coercion, the thin muscle over her left eye quivers open, revealing blurred lines and sludgy greys, yet the right side stays glued shut, the dry crust coating even her eye. Clumsily, Tabitha plucks her hand of the warm metal and brings it up to her face. Groping alongside her face, feeling dried fluid that had long since ceased dribbling down her face, her blunt fingers seek out her eyesocket to scratch away the thick husk, enabling it to flutter open as well. 

Dingy light assaults her sensitive irises, sending another -thankfully weaker- spike of pain through her skull that rips a shaky groan from her lips but leaves her senses blessedly intact. Blinking at the durasteel flooring, Tabby sends quick thanks to whoever constructed this ship using dark plates instead of reflecting ones before attempting to push herself up, her sideways position on the floor putting extreme pressure on the fresh bruises on her midsection. Even then, they protest the movement, a feeble dizzy spell washing over her, but the padawan barely heeds her body's ineffective signals any attention due to the strange rumbling's sudden shift in tone. 

It seems somewhat coaxing but that can't be, right? Neither rumbling nor machines can express emotions. 

As her thoughts trip over themselves, trying vainly to come up with an explanation, Tabitha finally maneuvers her upper body into an awkward sitting position so as to keep strain off her ribs and comes face to face with a sight that should have probably disturbed her to a larger extent:

Geometrically shaped bars of a cage surrounding her on all sides except for the floor. One of many, Tabby notes, eyes trailing down the length of the low-ceilinged room. Even she wouldn't be able to stand upright if she tried. 

Which she won't. The headache is still making her vision blur every time she shifts a little too quickly. No need to knock herself out by smashing her head against the floor. 

Therefore, one by one, the girl lets her misty sight roam over the cages, finding most of them - fortunately - vacant. 

One by one, a noose that had unbeknownst to her wrapped itself around her heart like a dozen cold claws, gives leeway, making breathing a tad easier. 

Tabby doesn't know how or why the constricting cord even existed, but along with it, a seemingly unwarranted sense of dreadful anticipation lifts off her conscience, freeing a vague memory she hastily tries to reel back in. Yet, it slips through her fingers, evaporating in her grip with faint echoes of blaster fire and the rattle of armor plates before vanishing completely and leaving her with the unsettling knowledge of having forgotten _something_. 

The feeling persists, gnawing at the base of her skull even as her attention frantically snaps to one of the tiny cages she had previously thought empty. A sudden movement catching in the corner of her eye has the pulse beating against the flesh of her neck skyrocket for a split-second. Without concern for further damage, Tabitha scrabbles toward the front of her cage, rapidly blinking to ward off the mist creeping across her fixated vision as pain rekindles throughout her skull. Pressing herself against the bars, Tabby peers several feet down the corridor into a cage practically bursting with brown... _fur?_

Metal bites into the encrusted side of her face, making Tabitha hiss when a particularly burning spot over her right brow comes in contact with the frigid alloy. Still, she flattens her entire upper body against the confines of her cell to get a better view of the large, hulking mass of hair, clotted with soot, gazing back at her with small blue eyes. 

_'A Wookiee… Explains the rumbling, I guess.'_

Tabitha is still processing the fact that she's trapped feet away from someone _she doesn't know_ as they're hauled Force-knows-where by a bunch of maniacal big game hunters hell-bent on stringing their heads up as trophies alongside what Tabby can only pray will not _\- never -_ be Ahsoka's, when the 

Wookiee speaks up in growls, rumbles, purrs, and whatever else their species employ as their manner of speech. The string of noises lances through her head like a blunt pole being rammed through one ear all the way out of the other. It drives boiling tears into her eyes and a clunky groan up her throat, both of which she quickly stifles in favor of comprehending the words she knows are spoken to her. 

The Wookiee finishes whilst Tabitha still scours her scrambled brain for what little Shyriiwook she recalls. 

"Uhhh… I-I'm sorry, I'm-" Tabby slurs, temporarily choking on her soggy cottony words. "I'm not q-quite fluent. Y-You asked my name?" 

They make an affirmative noise and Tabitha inhales deeply. 

"Tabitha. Flux." She responds, enunciating each syllable with careful deliberation. "And yours?"

Tabitha swears the response is somewhat subdued, a soft purr a fraction of its original volume that gently brushes against her ridiculously oversensitive hearing and whose content she has a difficult time deciphering.

"Chew-" Another clarifying rumble and the translation finally clicks as a triumphant grin teases her lips. "-bacca! Chewbacca." The padawan exclaims, a grimace contorting her expression at the sheer volume of her own voice that partially drowns out the agreeing growl from Chewbacca. 

Believing the conversation to be over as they lapse into silence, her slim frame melts against the metal web and her mind tumbles down a condescending spiral consisting of perpetually monotonous thoughts, asking herself _how this could have gone so wrong_. 

_'I did ask for it, didn't I?'_ She admits to herself, reflecting on every action and choice she made since entering that goddamn town. _'Got only myself to blame.'_

Choosing fight instead of flight, taking her time to rescue Eryk, going off on her own, arguing to enter the village in the first place. All of which she would have never done if not for _Ahsoka_.

Ahsoka who might as well be dead at this juncture in time, more than a day after she was first abducted. Alone, abandoned, waiting, _trusting…_

**_'No_ ** _. No, she's fine. She has to be. Ahsoka would never just… leave.'_

Tabitha didn't realize that her heavy eyes had slipped shut yet again, mind drifting towards what would be very fitful sleep, until she hears Chewbacca's 'voice' piping up again, firm and steady enough to slam a girder into her descending mind's way and ground her in the present. 

Slowly blinking her eyes open, Tabitha frowns at Chewbacca's inquisitive look, piecing together what little terms she understood in between the persistent headache and the lack of exercise in Shyriiwook. 

"A Jedi? Yeah… yeah. Just a padawan though." Tabby mumbles, brows creasing as much as they could without inflicting pain. "Why?" 

His explanation is forthcoming. As far as he was aware, there have been no reports of Republic forces near Kashyyyk - where he had been captured-, least of all ones with Jedi company. 

As she first acknowledges his words, she simply nods along, soaking up every ounce of information on their whereabouts she can grasp, but their actual meaning doesn't register to her until the rug is ripped from under her already unsteady feet. 

"Wait, wait, wait! Kashyyyk?!" The padawan blurts out, interrupting whatever the Wookiee male was about to say and prompting him to bob his hairy head once. The unspoken question tangible in the color of his small eyes, Tabitha elaborates, comically wide eyes raking across the room as if it suddenly differed from the state it was in just seconds ago. 

_(Crates secured on one end, cages everywhere else, so nope. Just as desolate as before.)_

"I was on Centares when they got me." 

_"That is a day's flight away."_ Chewbacca growls - at least Tabitha thinks that's what he said since it fits the context - and Tabitha sighs. 

One day… Longer than the head wound warrants unconsciousness for, which means they must have kept her stunned the entire time, and definitely too long to hope for rescue to reach them any time soon. If the dullness of the training bond at the back of her mind is anything to go by, they are still star systems away... 

"Great…" Tabitha grumbles, gingerly easing her forehead to rest against the bars. Relishing the cold that seeps through her skin and alleviates the pain throbbing in the space between her temples, Tabby attempts to come up with some sort of plan, a starting point that might kick-start an escape attempt, and is frankly baffled when her thoughts hardly bump against each other. Forming a much more orderly line than a couple of minutes ago, the girl can actually decipher some useful ideas without losing them a mere second later. Additionally, a good portion of the fatigue that had weighed her down seems to have dissipated, leaving her still fairly weakened but thankfully awake. 

Stealing a glimpse at the Wookiee carefully observing her from his spot a few cages down, the injured padawan can't help but huff as realization chambers up her spine, an indistinguishable smile tugging at the corner of her lips. 

Twisting her head to fully face the large creature awkwardly folded in on himself, Tabby has no qualms in letting her gratitude show. 

"Thanks."

It's simple but ostensibly enough for Chewbacca who purrs his acknowledgment with what Tabitha imagines to be a relieved expression on his face before moving on, seemingly having had the same idea as Tabitha. 

_"We can't be far from Kashyyyk.'_ He tells her. _'I have been here for a little over an hour."_

Lips pursing in thought, Tabby dredges up every piece of information she has on the Kashyyyk system. 

The Trandoshans wouldn't bring them to one of Kashyyyk's moons, nor would they take the risk and bring them to Alaris due to its proximity to the Wookiee colonies on Alaris Prime, one of its moons. 

_'But that would leave…. No, that would be plain stupid. Right?'_

"They wouldn't bring us to Trandosha, would they?" 

_"No, too many people. But perhaps Wasskah."_

Her brow curls at the side, cracking the dried layer of blood. 

"Wass-? Their moon?" 

Chewbacca's mouth opens, fangs glinting in the dingy light as his throat produces a sound he chokes on when suddenly the walls around them tremble, aforementioned lights flickering in sync with the ship's tremors. 

Fingers wrapping tightly around the metal in her palm, Tabitha hastily plucks her head away from the potential source of further injury, ignoring the way the quakes travel up her arms and make her bones rattle against the damaged flesh of her right biceps _(She had honestly forgotten about that one. Shouldn't pose much of a problem at this point)_ . 

The trembling lasts less than a minute, giving way to the occasional stray aftershock and a charged sense of anticipation burdening the air. 

"Guess we'll find out soon enough…"

**_____________**


	8. Reunion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With a bit of delay, I bring to you the next chapter! Hope you enjoy.  
> Fair warning: I've run out of prewritten chapters that I wrote around Christmas and school is as always absolutely stressful, so the next Updates might take a bit.  
> I'll try to keep it to once a month though!

_"Guess we'll find out soon enough…"_

Air propelled from her lungs, swallowing a mouthful of sand in the same gasping motion, the split-second sight of the planet explodes in a glaring white supernova, driving burning pikes of pain through more than just one part of her body. 

Every thought of how frighteningly weightless she had felt just a second ago as her coop's floor was (this time literally) snatched from right under her ass and the relieving, yet scary sensation of fresh air assaulting even the tiniest inch of her, rushing past her ears in what could have only been lightspeed, is engulfed in pains and aches of an already bruised body colliding with the sandy ground of a beach. 

Tabitha had expected anything when she said that one sentence. From being dragged out of their appalling confinements by the hair and onto whatever hunting ground Trandoshans prefer, to being shocked or otherwise stunned before being abandoned in some malignant patch of nature. 

What she had not expected was to be jettisoned like some sort of cargo. 

Screwing her eyes shut, Tabitha forces darkness over the garish mash of checkered stars dancing across her vision, ignores the rushing blood traveling through her ear canals to form a new thin trail of the hot fluid down her brow, and pushes up onto shaky arms. Waiting until the last specks of light are squashed by the dark veil of her eyelids, Tabitha eventually lets them shimmy open and surrenders her glassy eyes to the natural light of whatever planet they have ultimately been discarded on. 

Beyond the moisture mantling her retinas, she can discern crimson splatters amidst the sea of sand grains instants before a massive hirsute hand clasps around her shoulder, providing support to her unstable frame and a point of contact to convey the intense vibrations of Chewbacca's voice. 

"Yeah, I'm good." Tabitha assures the Wookiee perched at her side and lets her weight fall back onto her knees, slinking into the warmth of the palm on her back. 

Rapidly blinking the vapor from her eyes, the silhouettes of dozens upon dozens of trees, interwoven by vines and thick foliage, come into sharper focus just as she levers herself to her feet with the careful help of Chewbacca. The sound of water sloshing up against the shore, crashing against rocks of all sizes, notifies her of the ocean lying at her sun-kissed back. 

Patting her hands and trousers clean of any residual grit, Tabitha can't help the mildly inappropriate tomfoolery surfacing.

"Jungles… Narrow it down any?" Tabby glances over her shoulder, too brief to catch a glimpse of the Wookiee's expression as he retorts something whose translation falls flat. However, going by the particular pitch of his grumbling, the responding sass is palpable, prompting a smirk to pull at the corner of her mouth for the mere second she allows it to remain. 

Gradually, the low thunder of the transporter's thrusters grows fainter and there's no telling how this big game hunting thing goes exactly. Either way, they cannot stay out on the beach for much longer, Tabby remarks silently, slowly sweeping her gaze over the wide-open beach, right to left. 

Lips parting, the padawan intends to state her thought process… 

"Tabby?!" 

… only for the first letter to morph into a gentle gasp. 

Whirling her head around, her eyes immediately set on the lean figure scrambling towards them, maroon boots sinking deeper into the sand with every hasty step. Her orange face coated in all sorts of dried muck, pupils dilated until blue turns black, and mouth slack in shock, Ahsoka illustrates a flawless copy of Tabitha’s overall state… which is worrisome. Regardless, the split-second stutter of Tabby's brain does little to impact the function of her legs. 

"'Soka!"

On the naked beach, with the threat of vindictive Trandoshans looming over the horizon, the two padawans and best friends collide for the first time in three grueling days, wrapping their arms tightly around one another. 

Between them, the air reeks of salt and copper, sweat and blood, but Tabitha merely sinks deeper into the embrace, clinging to the warm, solid body and allowing her mind to ghost across Ahsoka's before slamming her shields down on the dull flurry of sensations intruding on this little cocoon they've created. 

This little cocoon where Tabitha can feel the cozy bubbles in her belly, can feel happy and elated, ignore everything and everyone around them as the majority of the last few days lifts off her shoulders. 

With her best friend in her arms, alive, nothing else matters right now. She knows it should, has and was distracted enough times to know how badly this can end, especially regarding that they're pretty much backed up against a wall with no promising way forward. But it doesn’t and upon opening her mouth, all that comes out is a frail, wavering whisper. 

"You're alive." Arms tightening around her friend's chest, Tabitha squeezes her eyes shut and dares not open them, afraid Ahsoka would vanish into thin air in her arms. "You're here." Her voice cracks on the last word but the girl does not notice, still not quite getting a grasp on the luck in her misfortune. 

Just as she doesn't notice the tension riding up Ahsoka's spine, clambering up one vertebra after the other until the older padawan withdraws reluctantly, nudging Tabby's shoulders, encouraging her to pull back and create a small gap between them. Their eyes meet and begrudgingly, the younger teen obliges, watching as a worried scowl pulls at her friend's white markings and suppressing a wince when slender fingertips dig into her sore shoulder blades. 

For a moment, Ahsoka's mouth opens and closes at random, tongue flicking across her cracked lips before the words seemingly come to her.

"What are you-" The Togruta pauses, shaking her head. "How are you here?" She eventually settles on, aghast eyes tracking the blood on the side of Tabitha's face and scanning the large gash above her brow.

The worried scrutiny and stunned question have the human girl grimacing, eyes flashing up and down, left and right looking for an answer that refrains from revealing the stupidity in her actions leading up to this very moment - the exact same kind of stupidity she always berates Ahsoka for. 

For one instant, Tabby ponders lying but one look at her friend dispels the inane notion. Focusing solely on Ahsoka again as her shoulders shoot upwards in one jerky motion. 

"Long story." She admits sheepishly, hoping the answer will please her best friend for now. 

Disregarding her wishes entirely, the reply clearly does not quell Ahsoka's need to know and the frown on her face deepens significantly, eyes narrowing to take on that look that translates quite easily to _"I don't believe you at all."_

And Tabby, in all likelihood, would have, if not for the foreign, young voice suddenly booming from their right. 

"One that can wait for later." 

Startling with a flinch that rattles every single raw nerve under her skin, Tabby realizes that they are not as alone as she originally assumed. 

Looking - _frankly looking_ \- around for the first time, the fifteen-year-old finds herself gaping at three equally soiled tunics surrounding them (with Chewbacca directly behind her)… Jedi issue robes, worn to the point where the fabric is mottled with close-meshed tears, loose threads, and in some places kept together by makeshift leaf bandages. 

Her vision trails up the tense feminine figure of the person who had interrupted Ahsoka and her. 

Shimmering emerald clashing with fervid hazel staring at her - or staring her down, she can't quite tell -, the disconcerting gaunt features of a human girl, perhaps a bit younger than herself, leap into her line of sight. With an unruly, brown mop of hair - minus the expected padawan braid - framing her lightly tanned and starkly dirtied complexion, the girl is backed by two other figures wearing varied styles of the same material. Twi'lek and Cerean, both male, both displaying an identically-

Out of nowhere, three expressions contort into fearful grimaces, eyes gawking at something above and behind Tabby's head but before she can even attempt to follow their line of sight, she's unexpectedly ripped from both her thoughts and off the sand in a dizzying twirl. 

World is reduced to a lone, discolored smear and Tabitha cries out in either surprise or pain or both. 

She can hear the bones in her left hand grinding against one another under the bone-crushing grip Ahsoka has on it. Beneath her, her legs pump to keep up with the reckless speed the older padawan subjects her to, staggering onto more solid ground whilst her sight fights its way to clarity and her ears pick up various roars overlapping in the sky above. 

Roars similar to the transporter's thrusters working against the planet's gravitational pull before. Similar yet weaker, growing nearer with the second. 

In a wink, her warmed heart is dunked into a bucket of ice-cold water, spurring it on to jam more blood into each last part of her limbs and digits, and her eyes tear themselves wide-open to their natural surroundings, dispersing the hindrances from her eyesight. 

Keeping her head and vision trained on four tunic-clad backs leading her and Chewbacca - who is running about half a step behind her - into the dense jungle, Tabitha wiggles her fingers until the digits enclose her best friend's equally vice, then pushes renewed strength into her legs. 

Nevertheless, the engines grow louder and it takes approximately 0.1 milliseconds for the weeping of blaster bolts to join. 

Jumping over the root of a tree, a shot splinters the timber. 

Close distance sniper shot judging by velocity and force of impact. 

They need more cover.

Before her, another bolt misses the brunette by more than an inch, prompting a subtle flinch and sharp turn left where the vegetation's density thickens considerably. 

The rest of the group follows dutifully, Tabitha and Chewbacca more or less relying on the others' knowledge of the territory as they're dragged along. 

Swerving in between colorful plants, bland bushes, and towering trees, the thicket stretches on seemingly forever on each side of her except above. 

Sun rays flood through the open canopy, bathing the monotonous green in ever-shifting hues of yellowish-orange, and Tabitha should probably stop paying attention to the blending colors and more to the sizzling holes eating through the jungle in their wake but her legs are burning, stinging, hurting, whatever. She needs something that draws her focus away from that and the boundless stretch of plant life, for otherwise, her knees will give out, deeming running a lost cause with her adrenaline flagging, and drag Ahsoka down with her. 

And _that_ cannot happen! 

But Tabitha is so kriffing tired of running and the déjà vu breaking her back with the disembodied weight of a small boy hardly helps matters. 

Yet even if she tried stopping Ahsoka certainly would not let her. The grasp on her hand forbids her, leaving out the survival instinct boiling beneath the surface. 

So, Tabitha holds on tighter, squeezes Ahsoka's hand, and focuses solely on the path she steers her, dodging what she can to the best of her ability.

Nobody's talking, panting heard beneath the fire as the minutes stretch long and Tabitha's clumsy feet stumble over one another yet again, Ahsoka tugs her along, Chewbacca has to zigzag to avoid a hit, and the three other Jedi Younglings spare but a glimpse back. 

Or at the buzzing sky. 

Tabitha feels it long before she hears. An unnervingly familiar jolt traveling up her nervous system, along with the rattling charge howling through the air behind them, has Tabitha lunging forward using up whatever strength reserves she hasn't discovered yet.

Throwing her body weight against Ahsoka's, snatching the younger human girl's arm, Tabitha catapults all three of them off to the left. 

"What are you-?!" The brunette grunts after the trio collide heavily with the floor, hurriedly trying to disentangle herself from the heap of limbs. 

Simultaneously, Chewbacca howls a warning to the boys, shoving them out of the way just as a raging fusillade reduces the place they just occupied to a smoking cleft and tears the trunk beyond into pieces. 

They're granted no reprieve, no time to comprehend and stare, for, in the very next instant, four skiffs hover just above the jungle’s thin roof, back to back, facing each trio of the group with roaring rotary guns. 

Tabitha scrambles upwards, closely followed by Ahsoka and the girl as each of them try to regain their footing before they have more holes than a Sarlaac has teeth. 

Just as the ravenette heaves herself up to tingling feet, unblinkingly staring down a flurry of barrels and weighing their odds to outrun _a kriffing minigun_ , not to mention with a six-man-group heading Force knows where, her wrist is caught in a bruising grip and she is yanked backward, away from Chewbacca and the two boys tucked securely behind his massive form. 

Disbelieving, her stare falls on Ahsoka’s back as the Togruta yet again tows Tabitha behind her (as if she can’t run on her own ( **_‘You really can’t.’_ **)). Then it flashes over her shoulder to where she can still make out the male trio retreating in the opposite direction, out of their sight and the range of the two skiffs hot on their tail. 

“What about-” 

“They’ll be fine.” 

Scowling at the girl, who for the second time today interrupted her, Tabby proceeds to open her mouth, worrying for the Wookiee and fellow Jedi, but clamps it shut, swallowing her protest when Ahsoka throws her a pleading glance. 

Puffing out an irritated gust of air in between her raspy breaths, Tabby dutifully follows her best friend and the youngling while the jungle around them is pelted by a rain of scorching hot pellets from the remaining half of the skiffs and their occupants open fire. 

These guys couldn’t hit the side of an AT-TE if it stood stock-still. The thought almost provokes an inappropriate giggle. Honestly, she’s seen clankers with better accuracy than theirs.

Tabitha ducks under a low-hanging twig, suddenly staggering forward a few steps when the heat of a blaster singes the hair at the back of her head. 

Okay, bad accuracy does not suspend luck.

They need to lose these guys before their own stroke of luck comes to an abrupt end, Tabby thinks, letting herself be hauled along as her eyes fly around their surroundings, looking for someplace to hide. 

Few plants, many trees, a lot of dirt, no cover whatsoever.

How is this jungle made out of trees and branches rivaling those of a Wroshyr tree, with a lot fewer leaves, but there is not a single dense patch of shrubs or a stone outcrop of sorts? 

Going up won’t save them, running won’t help any, turning around is plain stupid, therefore they need something on the ground. 

But there’s nothing here! 

Her analyzing gaze turns frantic as another shot almost takes off the tip of Ahsoka’s Montrals. Bouncing from one barren spot to the next, she contemplates every single row of bushes, regardless of how thinned out they may be, growing more hopeful the deeper they go and at the same time more discouraged by nature itself. 

_'Nature…'_

The scowl crumbles, making way for wide eyes and slack lips as an idea comes together before her third eye.

_'That's it!'_

On each and every planet, flora blooms to provide fauna with places to thrive, survive, and live. Places to hide in case of danger. Places off-worlders would never be able to uncover.

Ultimately, nature knows best, so why not trust it like the local fauna already does? 

For these Trandoshans, they may as well be wild critters in need of extermination. Why not act the part? 

Chest heaving, heart pumping, legs burning, and her very core aching, Tabitha attempts to block out the physical toils of her body and move beyond its confines, diving headfirst into the ebb and flow of the Force all around. 

Greeting her, the muted chill engulfing her mind tells tales of hunts long passed, lives long taken in one of the most inhumane ways, fear and loss long felt. 

A shiver runs down her spine, cold seeping into her bones as Tabitha momentarily slinks back into her body to feel Ahsoka's grasp on her arm. As her palm's warmth temporarily fends off the cold, grounding her long enough for her mind to plunge deeper down the river, she lets the current take her to its largest clusters, the place where animals go to survive predators and hunters alike. Remaining where her body is still in her control, Tabby lets the Force guide her, feeling her mind drifting off somewhere to the right(-ish) whilst her body keeps running forward, straight past a beaming herd of live beads scurrying towards that one spot where the Force amasses greatest. 

Relief threatens to wash over her limbs but the padawan forces all signs of it back, denying herself the ease of tension until they reach relative safety. She fears if she now lets go of that pressure and the adrenaline it is induced by, she will waver before they get there. 

Thus, Tabitha utilizes that exact hormone-induced energy (- weirdly fluctuating in her veins like adrenaline probably shouldn't do in a healthy body -) to overtake Ahsoka and avail herself of the older teenie's hold, using her own tactics against her as Tabitha hauls her off in the direction of (anticipated) protection. 

Ducking under another shot too close for comfort, Tabby feels Ahsoka tottering behind her, her confused gaze boring into the back of her skull, soon followed by another. Knowing exactly that the brunette will question what she's doing, Tabitha doesn't deign to retort with a detailed explanation.

A quick "This way!" is all the warning the other girl gets before Tabitha also seizes her bony wrist in her fist. 

Not daring to run in a straight line with two armed hover pods in pursuit, the young Jedi ushers all three of them in seemingly arbitrary zigzag lines, ignoring the concrete skepticism - and mistrust - palpable in the person to her right. 

That is until Ahsoka's yelling can suddenly be heard just above the raging cacophony. 

"Just… trust her, Kalifa!" 

Unconsciously, Tabitha files the name away for later, believing it better than to label her as 'the brunette' or 'that other girl'.

After several long-drawn moments filled with nothing but the same pelting downpour of searing raindrops wailing through the air, the jungle begins to thicken, broad trees growing in closer patterns, merged inseparably with brushwood grown above face level that could hide everything - _or everyone_ \- under six feet. 

_'Finally.'_

The petite girl puffs out a chafed breath, gulping down whatever fresher air she can get into her lungs before catapulting it out with a yell usually reserved for battlefronts. 

"Ahsoka, help me with this!" 

The request has barely left her dry lips before Tabitha grinds to a stop, causing both other girls to do so too, and - not for the first time since they have met in their childhood - finds herself unbelievably grateful for Ahsoka's understanding and trust. 

With nothing but a curt glance at each other, the older padawan nods her approval, shortly after sending a begrudgingly obliging Kalifa further away, through various more trees to find a safe hiding spot in the bushes. 

Luckily, the skiffs have been affected negatively by the immense change in territory, forced to go at a much slower speed to evade branches and vines, lest they want to get stranded down here as well. 

This enabled the girl trio to expand the distance between them until the hunters were pretty much shooting in the dark, lesser and lesser with every minute, which in turn will simplify matters for Tabitha and Ahsoka, and let Kalifa go undetected. 

Synchronously spinning on their heel, the black-haired girl instantly spies out the dark metallic glimmer between the greenery, rapidly closing in on their position, while beside her she can already sense Ahsoka's consciousness drifting into the Force.

Slowly, Tabitha also dips back into the Force, reaching for the planet's pure and sweet energy and waiting for it to reach back. 

It does, willingly accepts her as a part of its being, and wraps delicate tendrils around her fingertips, lending Tabby partial control of her surroundings just as it does Ahsoka. 

Control they use - or abuse, if you want to see it that way - without batting an eye.

Wielding the energy of the planet as their own, the tendrils tangle around the twin tree trunks at their sides and squeeze. 

Squeeze until she can hear disturbing cracks. 

Squeeze until she can feel splinters digging into flesh that isn't hers. 

Squeeze until the Force whines at the loss of something living. 

The trees fall and all the duo does is nudge them directly towards the oncoming aircrafts before pivoting on the spot and taking off after the third member of their involuntary group. 

The following crashes, thunks, and shocked (outraged) shouting are enough to vividly visualize the total havoc their little stunt must have caused for both nature and hunters. 

Out of the corner of her eye, Tabitha catches Ahsoka grinning smugly in her direction, prompting a smirk of her own to tug at Tabby's lips. 

Oh, how she missed this! 

The easy camaraderie and natural connection between them, allowing spectacles like that back there to happen. 

Her best friend and closest family…

Her sister in all but blood, Jedi Code be damned for a few minutes - If anything these last days have only reinforced the pride she wears in that fact. 

Solace in and after the direst of times only 'Soka can give her. 

Even now, nerves she didn't know had itched for the past days calmed at the sight of Ahsoka and her carefree, yet serious personality. 

All of the paralyzing worry and the blind terror is over now, and Tabitha has never felt more spent. 

Nevertheless, they are - literally - not out of the woods yet. 

So, Tabitha and Ahsoka sprint side by side, listening for their pursuers, who have yet to recover from whatever evasive maneuver that they had to put together and making sure the both of them are out of sight before scampering deep into some lush area of bushes where they both know Kalifa to cower in. 

It takes less than ten seconds to find the youngling amidst said leafage, thus they drag her deeper into it before flattening them against the dirt in prone positions. 

There they wait in uneasy silence. 

Uneasy silence that is unexpectedly broken not by the sound of the thrusters’ energy discharge but Kalifa’s hushed voice. 

“This is never gonna work!” She hisses in Tabitha’s general direction, glaring at her with torn open eyes, shortly fluttering from her to the noise of clamoring hunters echoing through the jungle from the path they vacated. 

And Tabitha understands. Understands not wanting to stay still while people, who want your head as a trophy, breathe down your neck. Understands the fright slamming your heart against your ribcage, forcing your breath to come out labored and strained as you hide mere inches away from those very same people.

But running isn’t an option for any of them - especially Tabitha whose legs have long gone from prickly to alarmingly numb.

“Shush! Just be quiet.” Tabby whispers, one hand waving at the brunette as if to disperse her words.

Just then, the twin rumbling of the skiffs’ engines draws nearer to their position, the strong gusts of wind repelling from their thrusters blowing through the bushes around them, thankfully keeping them hidden from sight. 

For now…

“They’ll find us!” Kalifa whisper-shouts. 

Tabitha shakes her head, glancing at Ahsoka who is merely looking at her, waiting. 

“They won’t!” The shorter girl grounds out in between shallow breaths, eyes fluttering shut as she nosedives back into the planet’s torrent. 

Around them, she can sense so much apprehension, anger, lust, fear, and worry, correlating each of them with their source proves too much of a feat for the tired young girl, therefore she heedlessly dismisses them and sets her focus on the curled and huddled up presences in their immediate vicinity. 

Animals hunkered down in every nook and cranny.

The perfect diversion.

Establishing a psychic bond between herself and a single bird within its flock way ahead is easy enough. Stimulating its anxiety, causing it to skyrocket and a primal fight-or-flight instinct to kick in hardly poses more of a challenge. 

Staying still more so. 

Since the bond is more or less mutual, Tabitha trembles and her legs twitch awkwardly but she suppresses the desire to get up and run, waiting for her animal counterpart to do so in her stead. 

Behind them, the thrusters comb through the scrubs, seemingly honing in on their position, and Tabby can hear Kalifa shifting beside her. 

Ahsoka yanks the poised girl back down just as a barrage of startled squawks filters through the leaves overhead, catching not only the attention of their pursuers but that of a wild Momong as well as it frantically scrambles away. 

To every seasoned hunter, clamor like that would indicate the movement of some creatures the animals perceive as predators. Such as the three of them would be. 

Even these guys cannot pass up a chance like this, shooting right past them with both skiffs and holler that sounds triumphant enough to both reassure and amuse Tabitha. 

_'This worked better than expected.' p_ ops up in her mind but she shakes her head to will the thought away, unwilling to lull herself into a sense of safety just yet. 

It's only when the engines' noise grows faint, clearly audible over the breeze's whining but faraway, that Tabitha pushes herself up on unsteady arms and peeks through the leaf bed concealing them. 

Seeing nothing life-threatening lurking in the treetops, the shaking padawan plops down on her ass and tries to fill her sore, burning lungs with air, concentrating on each deliberate intake of breath to calm her racing heart. 

If she thought her body was battered before, it's absolutely shagged now. 

Her legs are pretty much nothing more than two limp noodles attached to her hip, her head went from pulsing to piercing again, and the rest of her ached. But not that ache you get after a long training session or even by sitting too long. No, this ache penetrates through skin, flesh, and muscle straight into her bones, down to their very marrow. 

Sitting has never felt more like a privilege than at this very moment, submerged in twigs that tickle her nose and pebbles that poke into the numb meat of her legs. 

Nor has it ever been as beneficial for both her physical and mental health. 

A benefit that she is well aware will, unfortunately, end prematurely upon observing both of her new companions climbing to their feet in the twinkling of an eye. 

While they cautiously let their gazes wander across their, now quiet, surroundings, Tabby attempts to rub some life back into her legs, ears perking up when she hears Kalifa's wary voice, quirked eyebrow evident although she has her back to Tabitha's seated form. 

"They… actually fell for that." 

Ahsoka snorts and Tabitha can see her feet pivoting on the spot, toes turning towards Tabby's quivering knees. 

"Yeah, but they'll eventually come around." The oldest girl reckons. "We should get going."

All of a sudden, an orange hand, covered in little scabs and calloused skin, materializes in her line of sight, and with one last wistful look at the floor, Tabitha reaches for it, hand clasping around her best friend to let Ahsoka heave her into a vertical position.

The change, although expected, drives pins and needles up and down her lower body and she staggers. Her rapidly pounding heart skips two beats, expecting her face to get to know the ground a bit more intimately. Instead, her cheekbone meets Ahsoka's sharp collarbone and two lanky arms encircle her shoulders, intercepting her collision course with the dirt.

Her heart unclenches, lungs pressing a breath of relief through her throat as her muscles lose their tension all at once, forehead lifting only to sag back against her shoulder. 

This allows Tabitha to feel the vibrations of Ahsoka's voice instants before she hears it.

"You okay?" 

In response, the shorter girl merely closes her eyes, attempting to coerce some semblance of feeling back into her prickling muscles before ultimately pushing away with a languished sigh. Locking her knees in place to keep them from buckling, Tabitha puts on a ~~sarcastic~~ pacifying smile as she meets Ahsoka’s frowning scrutiny. 

"Just peachy…"

As suspected, the older Togruta does not believe a single word that came out of her friend's mouth and her scowl further aggravates her heavy feature. 

If not for Kalifa, she would have called Tabitha out…

"Yeah, you look it." 

...and Tabby is unsure whether or not to be thankful for that. Concluding that it doesn't matter, either way, the ravenette shifts her speculative gaze to youngling and cocks her head to the side, pursing her lips. 

Tabitha is undecided on what to make of the younger girl. After mere minutes, she seems… abrasive? A little rough around the edges is perhaps the expression most suitable to describe Kalifa's behavior. Curt, blunt, mistrusting, snarky, to name some of the adjectives that first spring to mind.

The problem is that maybe those, primarily hostile, characteristics are all due to their current predicament - be it having run from quite persistent hunters for what felt like an hour or being hunted in general… for who knows how long _('It couldn't have been that long, right? Someone in the Temple would have mentioned something…')_ \- and if not for it, Kalifa would behave differently. 

All these perhaps' and maybes make it impossible to determine the best approach when dealing with the youngling. 

So perhaps, staying as passive as possible is best for now. 

Until Tabby has gotten some more input.

Dislodging herself from Ahsoka for good, Tabby goes for the most objective opening.

"I don't think we were introduced yet." She clears her throat, biting the inside of her lip. "I'm Tabitha." 

By the looks of it, Kalifa couldn't care less for any approach Tabitha could have chosen, giving Tabitha's head wound one pointed look before walking off to the left without further notice. 

"Kalifa."

Left blinking at Kalifa's retreating back, Tabitha's bemused uncertainty is met with a simple shrug from Ahsoka as she glances at the other girl who reluctantly withdraws her hands from her shoulders, lingering in the same spot until eventually, Tabitha moves to follow Kalifa into the trees, shaking her head both to hide and physically rid herself of thoughts on how she could have handled that better.

  
  


For multiple minutes, the current lack of action lulls the trio into a strained silence, each of them listening for any signs of the Trandoshans, with their own anxieties and thoughts contradicting their desire to establish any sort of chatter.

At least, for that limited amount of time until one of them seems to overcome said tensions. 

Who? Take a guess. 

For all that she gives of that gruff aura, Kalifa sure is talkative.

"What did you even do to piss them off so much?" 

To some degree, Tabitha's brain has abandoned any thought that does not include a good nap now that running has finally been suspended, hence why it takes her embarrassingly long as well as a questioning glance tossed her way to realize that the genuine question was addressing her. 

The fifteen-year-old sputters, her transfixed eyes snapping away from an animal scuttling through the foliage and just so catching the aforementioned glance. 

"What, me?! Why?" 

Kalifa snorts. "Well, I haven't seen them hunt one group with four pods before. You or the Wookiee did something.” 

And doesn’t it say something about Tabitha and the working speed of her brain nowadays that for multiple long instances that _something_ doesn’t occur to her? 

That _something_ that would be one of the worst crimes to normal people? 

That _something_ that would have seemed like a crushing incident to her just a few years back and now just slipped away from her mind? 

That _something_ that consisted of pained cries, sizzling flesh, and deathly silence, provoking sympathy she could not quell despite whom it was for, and ending in a death that may have spurred on a personal vendetta. 

Her lips press into a thin line, eyes shutting for less than a second as a hand comes up to card through her matted hair, the throbbing ache in her right biceps intensifying when it comes to rest on the nape of her neck. 

Scratching the clammy skin, Tabby puffs out a downtrodden sigh. 

She knows what she did was justified and hardly preventable, yet she couldn’t stop the pit of her stomach from growing cold, quelling the tortuous pang of hunger and erasing whatever appetite has had time to build up over the last thirty minutes or so. 

Logically, she is aware that they would have been hunted, either way, the only difference being the number of hunters after them. But who’s to say it would have been as relentless? 

Who’s to say she’s not partially at fault for everything that happens? Because she stirred up the hornets’ nest in the worst possible way? 

_‘This would have never happened to Obi-Wan…’_ The padawan thinks.

“I… killed one of them.” She admits out loud, blinking her eyes open just in time to catch the plain disbelief tossed her way. 

“Wait, you fought _\- and killed -_ one of them and only got clocked over the head?” Kalifa echoes, upper body twisting to observe Tabitha as the older human’s hand comes to dangle at her side and a wince graces her features.

“I mean… Three, actually. But-”

“Three?”

“Alone?!” 

Head whirling towards the third voice entering the conversation, coming face-to-face with Ahsoka whose expression contorts into a multitude of emotions, Tabitha cowers. Tucking her head in between her shoulder blades, watching as her friend’s expression eventually settles on a disquieting glare that even had Kalifa screwing her mouth shut in a fraction of a second. 

In a vain attempt to save herself and her dignity, the ravenette spits out the first coherent sentence before Ahsoka could speak again, hoping it will not be the last nail in the coffin.

“Who said I was alone?” 

“The fact that you’re here!” Ahsoka glowers, her narrowed eyes promptly stiffening as a thought seemingly pops into her mind. “Did someone at least know where you were?” 

Tabitha opens her mouth to answer that “Of course someone did”, but freezes when she recalls her last conversation with Cody. Recalls calling him off without as much as a hint at her current whereabouts, and reluctantly shuts her mouth without framing the answer Ahsoka seemingly wanted judging by the vexed exclamation bursting from her lips. 

A shapeless exclamation Tabitha is one-hundred percent certain would have been accompanied by hands ripping out her hair if Ahsoka had some. Every other time that thought popped into her mind, the younger of the two had enough common sense to back down and quit the confrontation but for numerous reasons that include sleep deprivation and a general upheaval of her mood, this time is different, and instead of backing down, her hands fly up in grand, flailing gestures as a scowl of her own emerges from someplace she’s seen too much of lately.

“What did you expect me to do? Patiently wait for back-up as we were evacuating a village?” 

"Yes!" Ahsoka all but yells, stepping into Tabitha's bubble whilst maintaining their current walking speed. "You always tell me not to rush into things." 

"Hey, you two-"

"That's different! You-" Tabitha resists the urge to sidestep and enlarge the space between the pair.

"Guys-" 

"How is that different?!"

Both of them engrossed in their petty argument, neither Tabitha nor Ahsoka heed Kalifa - or their surroundings - much attention. 

Not until they suddenly find themselves shoved behind a tree's unusually gigantic roots, silenced from one second to the other by tanned hands clasped over their mouths and staring into the youngling's scrunched up face. 

Adding her back to the ever-growing list of aches after colliding with the ribbed bark, Tabby tries to dislodge the constricting grip on her jaw, only to have a cold glare sent her way, receiving a sharp jerk of its sender's head. Seemingly indicating to something on the small clearing they were about to-

"I'm telling you, I heard sssomeone over here!" 

Breath freezing in her lungs, her heart rate spikes, soaring from jittery to ballistic in the span of the second where her hearing finally picks up what Kalifa appears to have heard long before either of them. 

The sound they all feared to hear since first losing it: Thrusters, on the lowest settings, carrying a skiff just above the twisting leaf canopy of the jungle that conceals the trio.

The balls of her feet dig into the dirt, bark cuts through her tunics into the nape of her neck, and a chilly breeze nips at the beading sweat on her brow. Still, Tabitha dares not move a single muscle, dares not even inhale through the gaps between Kalifa's fingers despite her lungs' desperate plea for air, hypervigilant of the rumbling's increase in volume as it flies practically right above them. 

“They’re gone. Let uss not waste time. The hunt isss almost over." 

Heart skipping a beat as hope thins her curdled blood, Tabitha chances a look upward, catching a peek of the aircraft's underbelly gleaming in the marigold light of the evening sun as it passes through the rustling leaves.

"But-"

"We will get the Jedi whelp and her friendss tomorrow." 

It seems like minutes before the skiff and its occupants disappear from sight and hearing. 

Minutes where each second stretches on seemingly forever, little eternities where anxious anticipation prevails, and by whose end her lungs are burning and her head is swimming, prompting her to gulp down multiple deep breaths upon being released of Kalifa's stifling hold.

Beside her, leaning heavily against the tree trunk, Ahsoka fares similarly. Wheezing for air and recovering their motor functions one after the other, the argument - and words in general - is all but forgotten by two-thirds of the group. 

One of them is not yet ready to let that one go. 

"You know," Kalifa begins, giving both Ahsoka and Tabby the stink eye. "If I'd have known, you two bickering like an old married couple would almost get us killed, I wouldn't have asked." 

And with that, the brunette walks off, yet again not letting her two companions utter a single word in their defense. 

Tentatively, Tabitha glances to her right, at Ahsoka watching her with that firm shine in her eyes that tells Tabitha all she needs to know. Their ‘discussion’ is far from over but for now, the older padawan will leave it be, waiting until they are either hidden or off the planet for good. Frankly, Tabby would prefer the latter.

Accepting the orange-skinned hand offering her help to pull away from the tree, a light squeeze before the hand releases her’s, eases some of the tension out of the shorter girl’s back as both padawans follow Kalifa’s lead. 

Silence reigns...

“If I ask another question, are you two gonna argue again?” 

… for all of one minute. 

“Depends.” Ahsoka and Tabitha shrug simultaneously, grinning when Kalifa raises her eyebrows at them. 

All of a sudden, however, the youngling seems to sober up, raised brows dipping into a fleeting scowl before averting her subdued gaze, staring straight ahead so that Tabitha, whose grin had dissolved upon noticing the sudden change in the younger girl’s behavior, couldn’t see her expression. 

“You two know each other, so your Masters do too, right?” 

The question is simple enough, a request for some piece of information whose significance Tabby cannot yet grasp and honestly doesn’t need to. Its deliverance, on the other hand, confounds the fifteen-year-old. 

The voice she has come to link with a fierceness that could come relatively close to Anakin and Ahsoka’s sounds frail all of a sudden. As if the slightest gust of wind could shatter whatever lay quiet within the soft tone. As if whatever answer she would get could either carry her further down the stream of life or drown her in it. 

Unsure, Tabitha nods, realizing one second too late that Kalifa still isn’t looking at them. “Yeah.” She exchanges a halting look with Ahsoka who appears just as confused as her. “Why?”

Silence.

“They’ll redouble the search efforts then, won’t they?”

Tabitha freezes, staggering a minuscule step. 

The question is like a sharp slap to the face. 

The hope she can hear trickling through the cracks a punch in the gut. 

The clueless questioning both Kalifa and Ahsoka reek of breaks her heart.

Somehow, Tabitha has managed to keep that one question off her mind.

Would they? 

Her heart tries to convince her that they would, that her kidnapping was the last straw for Obi-Wan and Anakin and the Jedi in general, and they’ve finally put the necessary efforts into rescuing them.

Her mind, however, informs her that zero times two still makes zero. Why would anything change because of her when they haven't sent a search-and-rescue team for Ahsoka, have barely spared it a single thought, and Tabitha cannot remember hearing about three missing younglings, nevertheless some kind of investigation into anyone's disappearance. 

To be fair, she has only been there for a few days at a time, two weeks max, but the kidnapping of or other crimes against younglings - which have sadly happened often enough before - usually sparked a fast-spreading uproar throughout the Order. 

What changed? 

Simple. The war. That's all everyone talks, thinks, and cares about nowadays. It's priority number one in a galaxy where an individual's sole wellbeing slipped close to the end of that list. 

Even the Jedi Order is part of that galaxy, and even they can't resist the toll of war apparently.

But could Tabitha really tell them that to their faces? That the Order they pledged their lives to will abandon them in favor of winning one more skirmish? 

Could she tell Ahsoka that Anakin is waiting for her to return, moving no muscle to assist in any way?

Could Tabitha be that weak gust that demolishes Kalifa's resolve and hope?

Yes, Tabitha should be because if anyone deserves to know, it's them. 

But she can't. She simply _can't_. 

Because how do you say that? How do you explain that their only chance to flee is themselves because nobody else will try? 

Not only would the emotional consequences hurt, but they also would interfere with any chance of escape, trapping them here for good until the hunters collect their trophies. 

Therefore, Tabby won't be the one. 

She _cannot_ be the one. 

She lies. "Probably." The fifteen-year-old rasps, swallowing around the lump lodged in her throat. "Do you really want to wait that long, though?" 

This time, not even Ahsoka detects Tabby's lie. 

"No, we have a plan." The Togruta states with new confidence in her gait. In comparison to hers and Kalifa's enthusiastic paces, Tabitha's steps seem sluggish, more so than before, and she can hardly pull herself to full height when her best friend shoots her a determined look. 

"You didn't think I'd give up and hide, did you?" 

Just then, they come to an abrupt halt before a tree the size of a venator's hyperdrive. A glance upward shows why: 

A large cavity carved into the tree, concealed by its own leaves. 

Their hideout. 

Kalifa reaches for the wooden ridges and begins the climb upwards. 

Ahsoka quickly follows suit. 

Tabitha does not. 

Upon making sure, her friend has climbed far enough to be out of earshot, the ravenette releases a breath she has not realized she's been holding since Kalifa first uttered her question, and places the palm of her hand against the cracked bark. 

"You never know who does." The defeated girl mutters and closes her fist around the first point of leverage.


End file.
